


The Hunter of Waverly, Iowa

by NezumiPi



Series: Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD [2]
Category: Avengers (Comic), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Abuse, Backstory, Brothers, Circus, Poor judgment, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 09:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NezumiPi/pseuds/NezumiPi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how Clint Barton came to be Hawkeye and how Hawkeye came to be a hero.  Flashes back and forth between his childhood and his early days at SHIELD.  With just a dash of Pinky and the Brain. Can be read as Clint/Coulson if you so choose.  Cannot be read as Hawkeye/Deadpool, no matter how hard you try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a long-form backstory piece mixing comic and movie cannon with whatever I damn well feel like. I wanted to expand on what I wrote in You Can’t Spell Sniper Without ‘Spin’ but I wanted to change a few plot details. So, the first chapter of this story is my modified version of YCSSWS (I need to work on my acronyms) and in the interest of being at least marginally entertaining, I have posted the second chapter at the same time.
> 
> Content warnings are listed below and may contain spoilers.

Phil Coulson was having a bad day. He had been assigned to investigate three possible new recruits. One was a demolitions specialist who swore he had gotten over his cocaine addiction (he hadn't), one was a satellite engineer who had said she wasn't interested in government work (she still wasn't), and one was a sharpshooter by the name of Clinton Francis Barton (goddamnit).

Everything about this guy screamed problems. The first time he tried to enlist, his Armed Forces Qualification Test scores were too low. The reality was that there were men who were brave and honorable and hardworking who made fine soldiers despite not being the smartest guys around. But there was a limit. The army didn't want soldiers who were going to have a lot of trouble learning new skills, remembering orders, or solving the simplest of problems, so they set AFQT minimum scores below which you couldn't even enlist.

Barton apparently took the test again, six months later (they weren't really supposed to let people do that, but oh well) and passed, just barely. His profile of scores was strange. Paragraph Comprehension was awful and so was Word Knowledge. General Science, Arithmetic Reasoning, and Electronics Information were poor but not terrible. His scores on Mathematics Knowledge, Auto and Shop Information, and Mechanical Comprehension were pretty good, and his score on Assembling Objects was the maximum possible on the test. Maybe an uncorrected learning disability? Was he some kind of firearms savant?

Phil sighed. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s policy of seeking the absolute best person for a given job meant that he had often had to approach people with extremely lopsided ability profiles. It varied, of course, but most of those people ended up needing a lot of hand-holding, a task which inevitably fell to him.

If it were the scores alone, that wouldn't have been such an issue – he had served for six years, he was obviously capable of military service – but his file included a long list of disciplinary actions and lukewarm performance reviews.

Phil dialed up Barton's CO.

"So tell me what he's like."

"He's full of talk, big time. Loves to tell us all that we need him, wouldn't last five minutes without him."

"Is it true?"

"Yeah, probably is, but you're not supposed to say it. He loves to lord it over everyone. Makes the other guys in the unit want to kick the crap out of him."

"Do they?"

"Nah, not that I'm aware of."

So either, Barton drew less animosity than his CO believed, or he wasn't a whiner. Either of those was good. "You ever get the impression that he's slow?"

"No, but I make a point of talking to him as little as possible." The man snorted.

"I'd like to ask you about some of these citations."

"Aw god, he runs them up. If he wasn't a miracle with a rifle, he would've been dishonorabled years ago."

"Is he overly aggressive?"

The man seemed to consider the question for a moment. "Nah, I wouldn't say so. He'll celebrate a good shot, but he doesn't overkill or take trophies or ignore civilian risks. He's only fired his piece three times without authorization, and all three were hajis with vests – you know, suicide bombers – that he saw before anyone else."

"Is he a risk-taker?"

"Aw yeah, big-time adrenaline junkie."

"Tell me about the AWOLs."

"Yeah, they're pretty short. It's a tough job, I get that, and if he'd asked for permission to go off base and blow off some steam, I probably would've given it, but he doesn't ask."

"And what exactly is 'inappropriate materials ordinance'? I've never seen that one before."

"Yeah," the CO snorted again, sounding annoyed. "We had to make up a new category for him."

"He's been written up for it over a dozen times."

"Yeah, that sounds about right. It's the weirdest damn thing. The guy thinks he's Robin Hood or something. You take your eyes off of him for two damn minutes, he puts his rifle away and takes out a bow and arrow. Command's a little mixed on how to deal with it, because he's just as accurate with the thing as he is with a gun, but…"

"Let me ask you one last question. If we were to transfer him out of your unit, would you say you'd be relieved?"

There was silence for a few moments. "He's not a bad man. But he is a bad soldier. I think that's all I have to say on the matter."

* * *

Coulson landed in Basra two days later, looking ridiculously out-of-place in his pressed suit. At least the dark sunglasses were a hit. He walked past the vendors who set up shop on the fringes of the base to the long aluminum barracks where he had been told he would find Barton. He thanked his escort, who pointed to a blonde man reclining on a bunk.

The man had headphones on, but the volume was high enough that Judas Priest's _Hell Bent for Leather_ could clearly be heard from across the room. His bunk lacked the posters and tacked-up letters that surrounded most of the others' living spaces. There were no books, no magazines, though Coulson could see a battered cardboard box labeled "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". The man was tapping away on a laptop, playing some kind of first-person shooter, pausing occasionally to play air guitar. He gave a whoop as some sort of in-game objective was achieved and hissed, "Yeah, well your mom's a Nazi spawn camper, bitch. Suck my balls!"

"Sargent Barton," said Coulson.

To his credit, the man put his headphones and his game aside, before standing to greet Coulson. He didn't exactly stand at attention, nor did he salute, but in all fairness, Coulson's status in the military hierarchy was far from obvious.

"I'm Agent Coulson, from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."

"Clint Barton," the man extended his hand. "Are you part of Homeland Security?"

"We're an independent agency under the U.S. government."

Barton nodded vaguely, clearly unimpressed.

"I've heard that you have some extraordinary skills."

"I don't put out unless you buy me dinner first."

Coulson ignored that remark. "Grab your rifle. Your CO has agreed to a demonstration."

Clint smirked. "I'm as good as you've heard."

Due to the base's set up, Coulson couldn't actually see Barton's distance skills in action, just speed and targeting, but he had to reluctantly admit that the man was as good as Fury had heard. He was dead center, and he could fire from odd angles without sacrificing accuracy. Coulson tried launching multiple targets (okay, ping-pong balls) into the air. Barton could paint them all before they hit the ground, up to seven targets. With eight, he was iffy – sometimes got them all, sometimes not.

Still, the man looked pleased with himself. He obviously knew that three, maybe four would be the max even for an unusually skilled gunman.

He turned his head from side to side as if stretching. "I can do more with my bow. Let me go get my bow and I'll peg eight – hell, I'll peg ten before they hit the ground."

"With a bow and arrow?" asked Coulson, obviously skeptical. How would that even work? Did he fire ten arrows at once? He couldn't possibly reload that fast, could he?

"Well, a bow and ten arrows. I have my limits."

Coulson looked back at the CO who shrugged as if to say, 'your call.' "Okay, show me what you've got."

* * *

They were back in a bunker, on opposite sides of a table.

"I understand you worked in a circus?" asked Coulson.

"Yeah." There was a little defiance in Barton's tone. Maybe he was used to it being a point of mockery?

"With your brother," continued Coulson.

"That's right."

"Where is he now?"

"Dead, sir." Barton's tone was clipped, but not defensive. Not very attached to the brother? Or maybe just used to the question.

"Do you have a criminal record, soldier?"

"You obviously ran a pretty thorough background check on me. There's no way you don't already have that information unless you get your intel from the same place you get your haircuts."

"You learned how to shoot in the circus?" asked Coulson, not rising to the bait.

"You learned how to dress from Men's Warehouse commercials?"

Coulson reached into his briefcase and pulled out a tattered old flier, preserved in a plastic laminate. It showed a teenager dressed in weird, winged purple leotard cocking back an arrow from atop a trapeze. "I don't think I'll be taking fashion advice from 'The Amazing Hawkeye' anytime soon."

Barton glared, but held his tongue.

"I have some paperwork we need you to fill out."

"I don't do paperwork." Now his tone was flippant, but challenging. If this man was going to be remotely useful to them, Coulson was going to have to set some kind of limits and that started now.

"Listen to me, Sargent Barton. I have clearances you wouldn't believe. I could drug you to the gills and subject you enough brainwashing that you spend the rest of your days pining for a squirrel you met once on Mars. You're a damn good sniper and you work well alone. You're not cut out for this place," he gestured around himself to the communal barracks. "I am offering you the opportunity to do what you're good at and save the world, but if you don't want it, don't really want it, then you're not the best man for the job. And S.H.I.E.L.D. only wants the best."

Barton was silent for a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then, "All right. Give me the papers."

Barton was slowly, laboriously filling out paperwork while Coulson was mentally composing his status report for Fury, trying to find a way to convey the asset's archery skill without using an unprofessional term like "un-fucking-believable". He often amused himself in this fashion, mixing crude and business language, though he kept this wordplay to himself.

He looked back at Barton, who was slowly printing his AFO address on the wrong line.

Then something clicked.

Coulson was not an extraordinary genius, but he had an eye for detail, and those details would simmer in the back of his mind until they all came together in a flash.

His test scores. The box in Barton's bunk, it was a book on tape. He grew up in the circus; he was uneducated. And now the paperwork.

"You're illiterate," blurted Coulson, surprising himself by speaking without thinking first. "You can't read, can you?"

"I know what illiterate means."

"You can't read."

"I can read."

"Not well."

Of every barb he had thrown at Barton today, testing his temper, his compliance, this was apparently the one that stuck. The man defiantly kept his face straight ahead, but his eyes pointed down and to the right.

"How far did you go in school? Really." Barton must have lied on his enlistment papers.

"Fifth grade." Still no eye contact. "I still learned stuff after that, I just…" He trailed off. "You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and your fucking job. They need me here. There's at least two dozen guys here who would be dead if it weren't for me."

"Ah," said Coulson, "there's the attitude." He gave his blandest, most aggravating smile; he needed to see how Barton handled this, whether he could pull himself together and move on. "What makes you think we still want you? S.H.I.E.L.D. is an elite force."

"You know why you want me in your secret spy games club?" asked Barton, the arrogant smirk starting to re-emerge, "Because I've been in the army for six fucking years, and you're the first person to figure out that I can't read."

Coulson was reluctantly forced to admit that was a very good argument. He stood. "As soon as your papers are processed, you'll be on the next transport back to the states. You'll be assigned a tutor to catch you up on academics. Minimum four hours a day. Don't give her any grief or I'll hear about it." He clipped his briefcase shut and walked toward the door, but he stopped, turned back, found himself liking this guy despite the knowledge that Barton was probably going to be the number one headache in his department for years to come.

Coulson held out his hand. "And Barton, welcome aboard."


	2. Chapter 2

It was better when Clint was real little, at least that's what Barney says. He says they used to live up in the attic over Daddy's store, except the problem is that it's not really Daddy's store. It really belongs to those bastards at the bank (that's what Daddy always calls them) and they came along and said people can't live in there.

Clint's tried, but he doesn't remember living in the store at all. When they had to move, they got a trailer, but that was a lot of money, so Mama had to start working more and she started using that powder stuff so she could do double shifts. (Clint knows it's called meth, but he also knows it's a secret so he tries not to even think the name.) Barney says that Mama didn't used to double-sleep, the way she does now when she comes home from a long shift, the way she just lies there and she's more asleep than asleep because you can't wake her up.

Barney says it was better when they lived over the store, that when they lived there, Daddy wasn't always mad like he is now, but Clint don't think that Daddy's always mad these days. Daddy clips their toenails and gives them money for popsicles and he's started teaching them how to hunt. Daddy has a rifle and he takes the boys into the woods and teaches them how to hold steady and shoot and Clint is real good at it. He kills a rabbit on their first time out and they eat it for supper. Daddy takes him out hunting some more and it's great and it's just him and Daddy because Barney stays home.

It ain't always great, though, not even mostly great. Mama doesn't pay the electric bill and a deer that could've lasted them months and months goes rotten. And they're fighting and Daddy's pulling her hair and banging her head into the table and Barney and Clint hide under the trailer, right in the middle where Daddy can't reach. And then Daddy and Mama are doing that pushing thing and Clint can hear Mama crying and going all still like she's about to double-sleep. He knows it's called fucking but that's a bad word and he tries not to think it.

The next time Mama asks for money for the groceries, Daddy says, "Why should I give you more when you just waste everything? You should've made a decent budget for the shopping and the bills, or do I have to do everything around here?" So Mama says they have to make do, which means they eat ketchup sandwiches and dry cereal and the boys know better than to complain or they get a smack.

One day, Barney comes home with a note from school saying that they want to do some tests and put him in the stupid class and Daddy writes 'NO FUCKING WAY' on the paper and says, "Give _that_ to your teacher."

Clint starts kindergarten a few days late because nobody registered him, but he finds out that he kind of likes school. There's blocks and the playground has monkey bars and his teacher is very nice and she smells good. Even though he likes school, Clint doesn't go there too many days. Sometimes Mama is double-asleep or Mama's at work and Daddy's passed out by the TV and nobody wakes the boys up and tells them to get ready and they miss the bus.

And sometimes Clint is too loud or too rowdy or he leaves his toys out to get stepped on and he gets smacked. And then Mama or Daddy say he's sick and he stays home until the bruises fade. They do that to make sure the government doesn't start nosing around private family business, or at least that's what Clint's Daddy says. He says the police will come and take Clint away if they don't watch out.

So Clint misses a lot of school and they write him a note saying they want him to do kindergarten over again. And Clint is almost happy about it because he can't wait to see Daddy write NO FUCKING WAY, but he doesn't. He just writes his name and his drinks bourbon.

In the summer, Daddy is angry because those bastards at the bank want to take his store away. They don't know how to treat a man. Daddy says you treat a man with respect and the bastards at the bank just want him to lick their boots. Barney tugs on Clint's hand and says to come play outside, but it's sundown and it's buggy outside and Clint doesn't want to get bit any more than he already has. Barney does that sometimes – he tries to get himself and Clint away when Daddy's really mad, but Barney is also regular bossy and Clint can't always tell the difference.

Besides, Clint is just drawing with the markers his teacher gave him at the end of the year and drawing can't be bad. But now there's a hole in the paper. How did that happen? And there's marker on the table. And Daddy's mad, he's real mad, and he straightens up his ring to give Clint a thrashing when something crazy happens.

Barney throws the bourbon bottle at Daddy. It breaks and it's everywhere and Daddy's bleeding. And Daddy looks double mad, looks like he doesn't even have a brain, just teeth and a bat. Barney says, "Clint, stop acting stupid and go hide or I'll beat you up myself!" So Clint shimmies out the window and he crawls under the trailer and for some reason it doesn't occur to him until he's out there that Barney's not coming too. And he can hear Barney screaming and crying and there's a cracking sound, a popping sound over and over again, and Daddy is yelling too, and Clint just lays in the dirt and covers his ears, watching the bugs crawl by.

Clint sees a praying mantis, and he has an idea. He rolls onto his back and he folds his hands like he's seen kids do on TV and he prays, 'Dear God, please make my Daddy die. Kill him dead and I will say thank you and thank you and thank you.'

Mama finds Clint under the trailer in the morning when she gets home from work. He peed himself overnight, so maybe it was better he didn't sleep inside. She tries to take care of Barney. Daddy broke most of his fingers and Mama says he should go to a doctor but nobody wants the police to come and lock everybody up, so they set his fingers and they make splints from tape and good hard sticks. Barney isn't crying for real, but he's all red and sniffly. It's a bad summer.

And then it's fall and Clint is six and he's going to kindergarten again. He doesn't want to go back to kindergarten. He was already three grades behind Barney and he's starting to think he'll never catch up. Then a lady sticks her head in the classroom and says she's looking for Clinton Barton and Clint thinks that they must've changed their minds and they're going to put them in first grade after all, but instead she says she's Mrs. Moore and she wants to have a little chat with him and nobody's in trouble.

They go to a little room with a big desk and a round table and she turns on a tape recorder. She offers to get him a juice from the cafeteria, but Clint says no because he has a bad feeling about all of this and now his stomach hurts.

She says, "Did you have a nice summer?"

Clint nods.

"Did you play with your brother?"

Clint nods.

"What kinds of things do you like to play with him?"

"Legos. And Godzilla."

"How do you play Godzilla?"

"You build it with Legos and then you say 'Oh! No! There goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla!' and you smash it up."

"That sounds like fun. Did you get hurt this summer?"

Clint doesn't say anything.

"Sometimes when kids are playing, they might trip and skin their knees. Did that happen to you?"

Clint nods.

"Did your brother get hurt this summer?"

As soon as she says that, Clint's stomach hurts really bad and his face feels hot. Mama took off Barney's splints before he went to school, so nobody should've known about his fingers, but they were still kind of bent funny and here was this lady asking questions. Clint's mouth feels dry and stiff and he isn't sure he could talk if he wanted to.

"Did your brother's hands get hurt this summer?"

Very slowly, Clint nods because that's one of those questions that grown-ups ask even though they already know the answer.

"Tell me about that. How did that happen?"

Clint doesn't know that Mrs. Moore talked to Barney in this same room and that Barney told her he tried to climb up the side of their trailer but the window cover snapped shut on his hands. Clint doesn't know that, so he says, "Barney got bit by a dog. The dog bit his hands. Some of the other trailers got real mean dogs."

When the boys get home from school, Mama and Daddy are there instead of at work and Daddy's really mad. He says there was government people poking around and he knows that one of his boys must've said something to somebody. Clint says he swears he didn't tell nobody and Daddy backhands him across the face. He smells like bourbon.

Mama tugs at Daddy's arm and says not to make this worse and let's just go for a drive.

After they leave, Clint crawls under the table and he holds his hand right outside his mouth like he wants to suck his thumb.

"Get out of there," says Barney. "Quit being stupid. Everything is gonna be fine."

They watch TV for a while. They get hungry for dinner and Mama and Daddy still aren't back, but they don't want to get in trouble for turning on the hot plate, so they eat pickles and spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner. It's dark out and Mama and Daddy still aren't back yet.

"Let's go outside while it's still light out," says Barney.

They put on their shoes because Mama doesn't work that hard to see her boys run around barefoot like savages. Barney helps Clint with his shoes because they don't fit so good and it's hard to smoosh his feet in. There's still some fireflies out, so they try to catch them. Barney really wants to catch a cricket, though, because he thinks he can keep it as a pet like a boy did in a book they're reading at school.

Clint sees the lights first, red and blue and white over the yellow-green of the fireflies. He tugs at Barney's shirt and they run back inside the trailer and lock the door and slink down low so nobody can see them through the windows. Clint wonders if he should go get Daddy's rifle.

Then there's two police officers knocking at the door but Clint and Barney know better than to open it, so the lady cop takes a big tool and she makes the door open and there's really no place to hide in the trailer but they're under the table anyway and Clint's hands are in little fists in Barney's shirt.

The man cop says, "Which one of you is Charles Barton?"

Charles is Barney's real name. He raises his hand like it's school.

"Do they call you Charlie or Chuck?"

"Barney, sir."

The man cop looks at Clint. "And you're Clinton?"

Clint nods but he doesn't let go of Barney's shirt. "Yes, sir."

"Do you boys have any family nearby? A grandma or grandpa or aunt or uncle?"

"We got a grandma," says Barney. "She lives at the Oaktree home."

"We're going to call her and-"

"She don't really talk," says Barney. "They say her brain don't work anymore. She just lie there."

"I see," says the cop. "Anybody else?"

The boys shake their heads.

The man cop makes a 'come here' motion with his hand and the lady copy comes inside. They both sit on the floor across from Clint and Barney.

The lady cop says, "Boys, your mother and father were in a car accident tonight. The ambulance came and took them to the hospital, but there was nothing the doctors could do and they died."

Clint is in two places at once. This has never happened to him before and he's not sure if it's really happening to him now. He is in the trailer next to Barney and across from the cops who are saying that his Mama and his Daddy are dead, but he is also lying under the trailer and watching bugs and praying to God to make his Daddy die, but not his Mama too, definitely not her. Both things are happening at once and it is making his eyes hurt. He can hear Barney asking what's going to happen to them now, but he can't really hear it all that good – it's like Barney is small and far away and not really real, like the whole thing is a story book or a TV show and Clint doesn't think his skin can touch anything for real, no matter how hard he tries.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint Barton's flight landed at LaGuardia airport at three a.m. on the morning of his first day at SHIELD. He didn't have to report there until eight, but he certainly didn't see the point in shelling out for a hotel room when he only had five hours to kill. It wasn't that he couldn't afford it; it just seemed unnecessary.

If he'd had a storage locker, he would have stopped off there, but he hadn't really owned much when he enlisted and he hadn't bought much since. Oddly, for someone who had spent most of his life dirt poor, Clint Barton had a pretty big savings account. Not huge, of course, but he'd been in the army for six years, over which time he'd signed on for one tour after another. He didn't have any family to send paychecks to and he didn't have any loans to pay back. Being in the service meant his basic needs were covered, so his salary, meager though it was, had essentially been disposable income.

He hadn't had much to spend it on. The last time he was stateside, he had invested in the most durable mp3 player he could find and two dozen pairs of headphones. He had also purchased a high-end Fleshlight, but that got stolen only a month after he was deployed. (Clint was pretty sure he knew who took it, too, but he hadn't managed to get it back, despite all this threats about pinning the thief up by his ballsack.) He kind of wanted a motorcycle, but when would he ride it and where would he store it? So he bought videogames and gummi bears and DVDs when the mood struck him, but it always seemed to work out that he never owned more than he could carry.

He needed to wash up, he thought, before his first day at his new job, so he took advantage of the deserted men's room and changed into fresh clothes – camo pants and a white t-shirt. His camo shirts were various combinations of wrinkled, bloodstained, and smelling strongly of sulfur, so they were out. And sure, he had been issued a dress uniform at one point, but who knew where that thing was? But he did shave, comb his hair, and brush his teeth.

Then, he headed down to the subway to kill time and slowly make his way toward SHIELD.

* * *

When Clint arrived, he was patted down and scanned while his bag was searched. His bows were given apparently merited a second look, but since he had no arrows (stupid fucking airport security), he was allowed to keep them in his duffle.

It turned out that Clint was part of a group of about a dozen initiates who were all dressed much more nicely than he was and were chatting with one another about which fancy college they graduated summa cum whatever from. There were eight men and four women; six in military dress uniforms and six in civvies.

_Bunch of assholes_ , thought Clint. _Everybody talks big until the bullets start flying._ He hung back from the group and watched.

Or at least, he tried to, but a gregarious Black man in Army dress uniform up and tried to make conversation. Probably thought of himself as the goodwill ambassador, reaching out to the shy and awkward.

"Andre Forrester," he said, holding out his hand.

Clint shook it; he was a loner, not a jerk. "Barton," he said. "Clint Barton." He looked Forrester up and down. He seemed too soft to be a soldier. "You here for the black ops or the potato skins?"

Forrester laughed more loudly than was strictly necessary. "I'm a translator, actually. Middle Eastern and South East Asian languages."

"I'd have gone with the potato skins, myself."

"What about you? You must be in the service."

"Nope," said Clint, "fashion statement." And you know, he didn't always communicate in phrasal grunts, but he was busy trying to not make a fool of himself in this place and he didn't really need to be distracted.

The man laughed again. "Hey, why don't-"

Forrester didn't get to complete his suggestion because a thin, short woman limped past on crutches, a thick cast encasing her lower left leg. She pushed open the door to a conference room (Forrester – of course – jumped up to help her) and addressed them all. "All new SHIELD employees this way," she beckoned.

Clint waited until the others took their seats before settling into a chair in the back that was bordered by least two empty spaces in any direction. As soon as he sat down, the woman spoke. "I am Senior Agent Maria Hill, and I am here to welcome you to your new careers at SHIELD." She looked a little disgruntled with her role. Probably grounded due to the leg and feeling antsy about it. That was fine. Clint hated being grounded too.

"You will notice," continued Hill, "that the entranceway and the room we are currently in both have a green stripe along the floorboard. The door that you opened to enter this room had a similar green stripe. Green areas are non-classified and they are, for the moment, the only areas you are allowed to enter. If you go _anywhere_ that isn't green without specific orders from your superior, you are liable to be shot, tazed, tackled, handcuffed, interrogated, and detained for an indefinite period which may in fact exceed your natural life."

Hill must have already memorized their faces, because she handed each initiate a personalized navy blue folder without stopping to check a roster. Clint's was lopsided and heavier than expected; as far as he could see, none of the others' were like that. He opened it cautiously to find a small metal device that looked sort of like an iPod if it had been designed by one of those weird Puritan sects that prohibited fun. It had play, fast forward, and rewind buttons on the front, along with the little red circle that signified 'Record'. A dictaphone? Or possibly because it contained some kind of pre-recorded secret spy message. Clint preferred to assume the latter.

He looked at his schedule. He had a MEDICAL E-something-TION at 10:30 and P-something TESTING at 12:00 and something that looked like PRINCES but with an extra P from 5:00pm until 10:00. So he couldn't read all the words. This he could handle. Just show up at the right room number and pretend you totally knew what was coming.

"Your folders contain your schedules for the next two weeks. You will all undergo a baseline medical and psychological exam. It _will_ be invasive and you _will_ be ruthlessly truthful. We don't accept any less from our operatives and we have ways of knowing if you're lying." She sucked in a breath. "Three years ago, SHIELD instituted a policy of obtaining baseline cognitive function scores from all personnel to aid in detecting concussion so concussed agents can be benched until their cognitive scores return to baseline." She fixed them all with a stare that was clearly meant to convey an unspoken order.

Message received, though Clint. Underperform on the baseline or you risk getting pulled after every little bump on the head.

Hill went on to explain that they would all be required to take a two week class which had some long and pointless name that Hill herself consistently referred to as 'Principles' in which they would be introduced to the various declarations and treaties formed the basis for the SHIELD charter, as well as the charter itself. They wouldn't take their oaths as agents until the class concluded. "We need to know that we have your loyalty," she said, "and an oath to a charter you've barely skimmed isn't going to cut it."

Then she started handing out two-inch binders full of photocopied articles and typing. Their readings for the class, realized Clint. Well, shit. Clint knew he could muddle his way through dinner menus and street signs, even a _Hardy Boys_ book if it came to that (so far, it hadn't), but there was no way he was going to be able to read the Geneva Convention and the Constitution and whatever other crap they had in there. He would just have to fake that too.

Hill handed Clint his binder and he heard a light jingle. He opened it to find a key-chain thumb drive dangling from the inside ring. He hadn't heard that jingle when anyone else's binder moved. He took a guess and plugged the USB drive into the dictaphone. Viola! A file list which matched the binder's table of contents began scrolling down the device's screen.

Clint wasn't sure how to feel about this new development.

Next on the agenda was an hour-long sexual harassment seminar which, to Clint's great disappointment, turned out to be an _anti -_ sexual harassment seminar. It's not like he was expecting to pick up tips or anything, but come on, let's have some truth in advertising, right?

After being lectured not to touch, talk to, look at, or think about their coworkers, Hill announced that they were all expected to be measured by a tailor. Apparently some of their combat wear was supposed to be form-fitting and even the non-combatants had to be prepared for the occasional op which might require them to dress out in SHIELD standard issue identical grey suits. Clint felt juxtaposing this with the sexual harassment seminar was sending some really mixed messages.

"You are responsible for keeping all SHIELD-issued uniforms and operative wear in good condition and reporting any damage. If you gain or lose more than four percent of your body weight, you should notify your superior officer within one week," she added.

They split up by sex and took turns getting measured by an elderly British man. Clint tolerated the man measuring his inseam and his waistline and what he liked to think of as his wingspan, but then the tailor asked, "Does sir dress to the left or the right?"

"Huh?"

The tailor repeated his question.

"Yeah, I'm sure you think you're making sense, but you're really not."

The tailor whispered an explanation.

"Are you hitting on me? What the hell do you need to know that for?"

"It affects the cut of the suit, sir."

Clint looked dubious. "Left, I guess."

"My thanks. And if sir would take off his shoes?"

* * *

Phil Coulson knew exactly what day it was. He knew there was a new batch of initiates starting today and he knew all of their names. (He also knew their birth dates, political affiliations, and shoe sizes, but none of that was immediately relevant.) Three were his recruits: a computer programmer named Fitzwallis, an explosives expert named Daekwon, and a sniper named Barton. The first two were going to be fine. The programmer was a little quirky, but she was talented and worked well either alone or in a group. The ordinance man was a solid, steady soldier type who would take to SHIELD like a fish to water. The sniper, on the other hand, was a bit of a concern.

It reflected poorly on Phil if his recruits didn't pan out, and it risked SHIELD security because it meant bringing someone into the building who would soon have reason to hold a grudge.

In all truthfulness, Phil didn't really like Barton. Based on pages of records and their brief interaction, Phil could see that Barton was a guy who liked to show off, who was quick to anger, and didn't mesh well with a group. That said, one of the reasons Phil was so valuable to SHIELD was that he was able to put his personal feelings aside when he had to make a judgment, and in a rational assessment, Barton was an asset.

His phone buzzed. He picked it up. "Coulson speaking."

"Hey Phil, it's Luis from Medical. I've got one of your new recruits here, a Sargent Barton?"

Phil dragged his hand over his head. The guy couldn't get through the medical exam without giving them a hard time? But he forced a pleasant voice and said, "What seems to be the problem?"

"Nothing urgent. His chest X-ray is showing evidence of tuberculosis. Given where he caught it, it should respond to antibiotics, but he'll have to be grounded until we can get his titer down. I'm guessing six to eight weeks."

"Thanks for the heads up." He hung up the phone. That was almost good news. Six to eight weeks with a perfect excuse to keep Barton out of the field while they pushed him through literacy instruction.

Coulson returned to looking at photographs of suspicious encampments in Western Africa.

He was next interrupted hours later when his phone buzzed again. "Coulson speaking."

"This is Ghazi, from Psych. We're baselining a batch of initiates today and we've got one, file says he was your recruit."

"His name is Barton?" Phil guessed.

"That's the one. His evaluation isn't exactly going to be valid. We're administering the surveys orally like you said, but he's really just," she paused, searching for and failing to find a scientific term, "messing with us."

"Do you think he's a psychopath?" asked Phil.

"No, there's no evidence of that."

"Do you think he's a spy?"

"There's nothing to suggest that either."

"That's all we really need to know. Don't worry too much about the rest."

"What about hotspots?" asked Ghazi. Hotspots were topics or issues which were likely to heighten emotion or diminish an agent's judgment. The initial evaluation typically mapped them out.

"Don't worry about it for now. He's grounded for over a month, so you can get more later. Just finish the standard battery." Phil tapped his fingers against his desk, then added," I might drop by and observe."

"Of course, sir."

* * *

Phil Coulson understood that there was some gambling involved in his job because his job was to manage and predict people who were inherently unpredictable, so he wasn't averse to risk. That being said, he believed in managing risk, in cutting his losses and not throwing good money after bad. He would have to go see how Barton was fairing. Maybe he had been wrong and Barton couldn't cut it.

When he got down to Psych and centered himself in front of the two-way mirror, he could see Ghazi's junior agent sitting across the table from Barton. "Now I am going to say the beginning of a sentence," she said, "and I would like for you to tell me how it should end."

Barton nodded. He was slouched in his chair, legs spread wide and angled out across the tile, his fingers knitted together behind his head.

"Sometimes I wonder…" She gestured that it was Barton's turn to speak.

"Why an organization that wears so much leather doesn't sell porn DVDs on the down low."

"Let's try to keep it clean, Sargent Barton," said the junior agent. "I deserve…"

"A Grammy."

"I like…"

"Big butts and I cannot lie."

She looked confused. "Do you want to elaborate on that answer?"

"My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon."

She obviously caught the reference with the second line. "Sargent Barton, this would go more quickly if you would be serious."

"I am being serious. My pet snake is prepping for a marathon and he's carbo-loading."

"My father…"

"Is dead."

"My mother…"

"Is dead."

"If I could change one thing about the world…"

"I would get rid of AIDS."

The agent looked a little surprised at Barton's apparent earnestness. "Why did you choose that?"

"Well, they tried wishing for world peace on the Simpsons and that ended up sucking. And I figure anything that's been around a while, getting rid of it would have consequences, like all that fragile ecosystem crap they put on nature shows, but AIDS has only been around for what, thirty years? So we could probably get rid of that without screwing everything up too badly."

Coulson was amused. Barton was apparently smarted than he looked, sounded, acted, or tested.

"I see," said the junior agent.

"Besides, if they got rid of AIDS, I could bareback without any consequences."

She looked like she was holding in a sigh, but she continued the test. "Sometimes, I regret…"

"I want to skip that one."

She hesitated for a moment before apparently deciding to move on. "When I'm alone, I like to…"

"Oh, come on! That's entrapment! First you tell me to keep it clean, then you go asking questions like that? Man, you just like making this difficult, don't you?"

Phil walked back to his office. Maybe this wasn't going to work. Maybe they would just have to find a different sniper. This called for coffee.

* * *

It was past nine when Coulson realized that he hadn't eaten dinner. The vending machine nearest his office was out of Little Debbie fruit pies, but he was pretty sure the vending machine on the ground floor still had them in stock. Or he could do what he was had promising himself he was going to do on four out of the last six New Years' celebrations and consistently eat real food which bore some resemblance to its natural state.

Nope, that wasn't going to happen.

He had made his way down to the ground floor when he remembered that the initiates would still be in Principles. He headed down the south corridor to observe the class. Might as well make a decision with all the information.

Thanks to architectural foresight, all of the conference rooms had hidden observation booths – not completely undetectable, but adequate under the circumstances.

The class was dissecting a quote from Thomas Jefferson and discussing its modern relevance. Barton was sitting apart from the others, slouched down in his chair, twirling a pencil between his fingers. His eyes were on whoever was speaking, though, and the dictaphone was sitting out in front of him, red recording light on.

As the discussion petered out, the instructor turned to Barton and asked for his opinion.

"You mean what would Jefferson say if he was alive today?"

The instructor nodded.

"Probably, 'get me out of this coffin'." Barton shrugged, before adding, "Or maybe," he switched into a low, echoing voice, "BRAAAINS!"

The other initiates laughed. The instructor gave a thin smile, then stared down Barton with the clear intention that he give a real answer.

"I don't know," said Barton. "Probably, 'Get the cuffs off me! She told me she was eighteen! I don't know any Sally Hemmings! Don't taze me bro!'" Barton smirked. "And then if he saw SHIELD – 'cause that was the real question, right? Whether he would approve of the work y'all are doing? – he would probably say, 'Holy shit! They put a Negro in charge!'" The pencil finally stopped spinning. "My point is, who the hell cares what dead guys think? If something's wrong thing to do, it's still wrong even if they were for it, so why even bother with a bunch of ancient assholes?"

Phil Coulson was smiling despite himself, mentally replaying Barton's little speech. It was like outsider art, in a way – the wisdom of the uneducated mind. They were just going to have to find a way to keep him.


	4. Chapter 4

When the lady cop says, "We're going to take you boys-" Barney doesn't let her finish. He grabs Daddy's gun and points it at them and says, "You ain't gonna put us in jail! I won't let you!" And Clint is glad he's got Barney, because Clint feels too sick to do any shooting right now.

"Nobody's going to jail," says the policeman. "We're going to take you to a nice woman's house. Her name is Barbara and she's going to look after you for a little while, like a babysitter. Okay?"

Barney fingers tighten on the gun, but he nods.

"Now, I need you to put that gun down on the floor."

The cops tell Barney and Clint that they have to pack up their stuff. The lady cop gets some trash bags from their car and she gives one to Clint and one to Barney and says to put their clothes and toothbrushes and stuff in there.

Clint is still sitting under the table with his chest curled over his knees, so Barney packs up his stuff for him. There isn't much to pack. Even though he knows they're not, Clint thinks it looks like they're throwing all of his things in the trash.

Barney wants to pack Daddy's gun, but the policeman says no.

"It's ours," says Barney, "and you ain't got no right to take it away from us."

"It's not even a legal piece," says the policeman. "Nobody living here had a license for it, and look, the serial number's filed off." And he takes Daddy's gun and hands it to the lady cop who puts it in their car.

"Bastards don't know how to treat a man," grumbles Barney.

They take the boys to Miss Barbara's house and Clint's still not talking at all. He's not being willful and doing it on purpose, it's just hard for his brain to think of words and even harder for his voice to say them. There are three kids already at her house, but they're all in bed. She doesn't get mad at Clint for not talking and she doesn't get mad at Barney for cussing. She says all of that can wait until morning.

She wants Clint to sleep in a room that has a little boy in it who's practically a baby and she wants Barney to sleep in a room that has a teenage boy in it. She says she doesn't have any empty rooms and she says business is booming and she's laughing and Clint doesn't see what's funny.

Barney pads into the room he was assigned and Clint follows him.

"No, dear, you're going to sleep in the room across the hall." Barbara puts a hand on Clint's shoulder but Clint plants his feet on the ground and puts on his stubborn face.

"We always got the same bed, ma'am," says Barney.

Barbara sighs. "All right," she says, "just for tonight."

* * *

Clint looked back at his schedule. He was definitely in the right place. The door was mostly shut, but he knocked anyway – see, he had manners.

An elderly woman answered, leaning on a cane. She had a long grey braid and she was wearing civilian clothes. She looked Clint over before smiling and saying, "You must be Sargent Barton." She held out a hand. "I'm Isabel Gutierrez."

Clint shook her hand. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

"Call me Izzy." She smiled warmly. "I've been contracted to bring you up to speed on academics. We'll do some formal tests today, but first I'd like a quick rundown of your education."

"Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten. Also watched a lot of Star Trek and spent a lot of time around sentimental middle aged ladies and their life-lesson spewing cats."

"Now, we'll have none of your sass," said Izzy blandly. Her voice was almost patronizing, but in a way that suggested she used this tone with all people in all situations.

Clint sighed. He _was_ funny. Just because no one appreciated it lately, didn't mean he wasn't. "I went to regular schools up through the fifth grade. Then I ran away to join the circus."

Unlike virtually everyone, Izzy completely ignored the circus bit. "Regular schools," she repeated. "Plural. You a military brat?"

"I grew up in a series of foster homes. Pretty much every time I switched homes, I switched schools, and then they'd be teaching something different. So I just didn't give a damn," he concluded in a tone that made clear (he hoped) he still didn't give a damn.

"Of course, dear." Izzy was rummaging through a small wheeled suitcase. She lifted a heavy, hard-bound blue binder out and put it on the table. She balanced the binder open like an easel and flipped through the pages. "Now read this sentence to yourself and tell me one word that best fits in the blank."

They switched over to math problems and spelling and reading long lists of real and made-up words.

"I'm not going to give you much homework to start; I don't want you practicing bad habits."

"Oh, I don't need any practice," interrupted Clint. "I've got all my bad habits down pat." He wore his best shit-eating grin.

Izzy handed him a paperback book. A kids' book. "They gave me a little information about you. Give this a try. I think you'll like it."

Clint flipped backward through the pages before he looked at the cover. The print was huge and there were little line-drawing illustrations scattered throughout. It was clearly made for eight-year-olds. He read the title out loud. " _My Side of the Mou – tane,_ uh, I guess that's _Mountain_."

"It's about a young man who decides to live alone in the woods. He trains a falcon to hunt for him. Read a couple chapters tonight; tomorrow, you can tell me what you think."

* * *

Miss Barbara tells Clint that his Mama and Daddy are watching him from heaven and Clint thinks he doesn't like any part of that.

He doesn't like the idea of his Daddy being in heaven. What's the point of having a heaven if people like Daddy get in?

He doesn't like the idea of them watching him. He doesn't like his Daddy watching him because it makes him feel like he's gonna be in trouble. He doesn't like his Mama watching him because she's probably real mad at him for praying to god and making her die.

And he really doesn't like the idea of his Mama and his Daddy ending up in the same place. Even if Daddy didn't go to hell, maybe they could have sent him to a different part of heaven or something instead, so Mama doesn't have to see him anymore and they don't have to fight any more and she won't have to do that pushing thing, that fucking, and she won't cry.

Clint doesn't tell Miss Barbara any of that. In fact, he hardly talks at all when he's at her house. He talks a lot at school, though. He and Barney are going to a different school than before, because they have to go to the school near Miss Barbara's house. In the new school, they're doing weird stuff and they want Clint to write his letters a different way and do something with triangles and pennies to make his alphabet sounds and he's never seen anything like it, so he burps real loud and all the kids laugh.

Miss Barbara takes them to the doctor and Clint gets a whole bunch of shots. They keep trying to do stuff to fix Barney's hands, so they send him to another doctor and another doctor and Barney gets really angry and he says his hands are fine and everybody should stop it stop it stop it.

The social worker says they can't stay with Miss Barbara forever, but they stay until almost Christmas. Miss Barbara gives them duffle bags for a Christmas present, so they won't have to use trash bags for packing. Then the social worker shows up and she says, "No, I'm just taking Barney. Clint is going to a different home."

Clint is mad because nobody told him that could happen. Barney is his and he doesn't want to share. Being sad makes him quiet, but being angry makes him loud. He calls the social worker a liar and a cheater and Barney just smirks.

Clint goes to live with Miss Jolene and Mister Marcus. They have a little house with a leaky roof and a cellar that's all full of interesting things. Mister Marcus is deaf and Miss Jolene says she heard that Clint doesn't talk too much, so that's serendipity.

They're old and they're Black. Clint doesn't know too many Black people, but Miss Jolene and Mister Marcus are wonderful. Miss Jolene cooks real good and she teaches Clint how to tell which grapes are going to be sour and how fix up a leaky pipe. Mister Marcus doesn't hear, but he talks sign language and he teaches some to Clint. They help him build a snowman and when his school (his _third_ school) has a talent show, Miss Jolene makes him an Elvis costume and her and Mister Marcus come and cheer him on even though Mister Marcus can't hear Clint sing.

Clint has a secret thought, a guilty thought: he's glad Barney's not there. Miss Jolene and Mister Marcus are so nice and it's all for Clint. He's like a sponge, soaking up all the niceness, and he doesn't think he will ever be full.

Barney's must not like his new house, Clint thinks, because he keeps running away and trying to get over to Miss Jolene's and Mister Marcus's, where Clint lives. Two times he actually makes it, too. The other times he always gets caught first. The two times he makes it, he sneaks into the cellar where Clint's bed is and sleeps there until the morning, until he gets found out and they come and take him away.

 

* * *

The first few weeks after Barton joined up with SHIELD were the worst in Phil Coulson's career. Well, no. Not the worst. The worst weeks were the ones when agents came home in body bags, or were recovered from the enemy as unrecognizable shells of their former selves. If Phil wanted to be perfectly accurate (and quite often, that was exactly what Phil wanted), he would have said that the first few weeks after Barton joined up with SHIELD were the most annoying in his career.

He prided himself of being able to manage difficult personalities and difficult circumstances, often at the same time, but he was having a hell of a time figuring out what made Barton tick. The psych report was, predictably, no help at all. He "uses humor as a defense mechanism"? Thanks. What insight. (Phil was going to take a long, hard look at their budget.)

After two weeks as an initiate, Barton ekes his way through Principles and takes his oath, so they finally let him out on the shooting range, which is when people finally stop questioning Phil's decision to bring him on.

Barton, rather than reinforce people's vague beginnings of respect, was now dividing his waking hours into perfectly irritating thirds. He spent one third of his time in physical training, at the range or the gym. He spent one third of his time studying alone or with Izzy. He spent the final third being an absolutely unbearable pain in the ass, a category which included such activities as gradually mapping the base's ventilation system, perching on a cabinet in the corner of the cafeteria while staring dead-eyed at a random assortment of SHIELD staff, and alienating his new co-workers with comments like, "You took five shots to kill three guys? Amateur." and "You look just like a stripper I met in a Missouri truck stop."

Phil was running out of things to make Barton alphabetize.

* * *

Sometimes Barney and Clint get put in the same foster home. They spend almost two years together with the Gunthers, who aren't real mean or anything, they just treat the boys like a job. They get two checks every month, one for each boy, and they figure if they can keep the boys for less money than is in the checks, then that's easy profit.

The Gunthers' real kids get peanut butter and jelly; Clint and Barney just get peanut butter. The Gunthers' real kids get to go to the movies; Clint and Barney get to go to the park. The Gunthers' real kids get bedtime stories; Clint and Barney get beds.

What's weird is that it's way better than what they had with Mama and Daddy – they have enough food and nobody's trying to beat anybody up – but instead of being happy about it, they're jealous of the Gunthers' real kids. When Barney gets jealous, he gets mad. Clint gets mad too, but he tries really hard to be good. He sort of hopes (maybe, not really, a little) that if he's really, really good, Mr. and Mrs. Gunther will decide to make him one of their real kids.

* * *

One of Barton's more annoying quirks was his tendency to wear earbuds everywhere. Coulson understood this to be a sign of protracted adolescence and supposed that if he told Barton to take them out, they would be replaced with black eyeliner or an elaborate and impractical piercing.

Phil went down to the range to get in some of his required hours. There was Barton, ear protection on, his dictaphone and earbuds lying on the bench behind him. Phil didn't have to sneak if he wanted to know what Barton was listening to; Barton was still probationary, which meant senior agents had nearly unlimited rights to his life.

But then, Phil was allowed some idle curiosity, wasn't he?

He settled silently on the bench and held an earbud to his ear.

"Wednesday." It was Barton's voice. "Wed-ness-day. Wednesday. Beautiful. Bee-uh-you-tih-full. Beautiful. Function. Fun-kuh-tie-on. Function."

Phil put down the earbud and watched Barton shoot for a few minutes before heading back to his office; he'd get his hours in later.

The thing of it was, Izzy had worked for SHIELD many times before, most often to improve a foreign operative's English. She had a particular gift for making the peculiarities of English spelling accessible to her students, but Barton was clearly still struggling.

Case-in-point: Coulson couldn't figure out what Barton had meant on some of his advance orders forms. In the space marked _Religious Preference_ , Barton had printed LOUTHERN. Barton hadn't shown any signs of religiosity since coming to SHIELD, so Phil couldn't guess on that basis either. He summoned Barton to his office.

"Do you have a religion, Barton?"

"I'm a Lutheran." Clint wore his broadest smirk.

Ah. Spelling mystery solved. As for the mystery of why Barton couldn't answer a simple question without making up a ridiculous lie, Phil was normally willing go forth in ignorance, but his tolerance was in a waning phase.

"No, you're not," said Phil. "You're not a Lutheran. Do you realize what this question is for? It's so in the rare case that you're dying slowly enough for it to matter, we can get someone to give you last rites."

"I _am_ a Lutheran," answered Barton. "I got baptized a Lutheran and as far as I know, they never kicked me out, so that makes me a Lutheran. You can tell them I don't care about any last rites crap, though. I only got baptized 'cause I figured out that you got a party and people gave you money."

* * *

The next time they're in the same foster home, they end up living with Revered Mike and Miss Nancy. They're very religious and they talk about god all the time. Clint's got a smart mouth and he spends a lot of time copying verses out of the Bible about wicked tongues and obedience and one time about an ass, which – really, come on – how do they expect Clint to react? Barney gets into a different sort of trouble (mainly kissing their daughter) and when their oldest son comes home from being a doctor in Africa, they send Barney off someplace else.

By now, Clint's figured out that Miss Barbara was just wrong and his Daddy's not in heaven. Reverend Mike talks about the kingdom of heaven a lot and how it's full of the best people, the saints and they're all nice to each other all the time and there's no fighting or sinning or cussing and there's no way Daddy could be like that.

He asks Reverend Mike, "How do you be sure you go to heaven?"

"It's all up to God, son," says Reverend Mike, "but you have to do your part, too. You have to live right by the Bible and get baptized."

Every once in a while, Clint wakes up before anybody else, and he wonders if Mama could be a saint. She cussed too and she fought sometimes. Her being in hell with Daddy is even worse than her being in heaven with Daddy. It's bad for her, and it's bad for Clint, too, because it means he can't see Mama without seeing Daddy besides, and Clint never, ever wants to see Daddy again.

Living right by the Bible sounds hard, but Clint doesn't want to end up in the same place as Daddy, so he tells Reverend Mike one day, "I wanna get baptized," and Reverend Mike is so happy, Clint knows he made the right choice.

* * *

Sitwell stuck his head in the door. "I need to borrow your eagle-eyes."

A voice to his right shouted, "ISS AWKEYE! NAH EAGLE, AWKEYE!"

Sitwell turned and there was Clint Barton standing at attention, mouth covered in packing tape.

"He's still grounded by medical. Can't go offsite," said Coulson, offering no explanation for Barton's punishment.

"I don't need him offsite. I need eyes on photos, we're helping out the FBI."

"Take him." Coulson turned to Barton. "You can take the tape off your mouth. Don't give Sitwell any trouble or I'll pull you off the range for a week." Phil had been saving that threat for when it mattered.

Sitwell led Barton down three flights of stairs to a part of the building he'd never seen before. He indicated a series of photographs laid out on a card table. The same child appeared in all of them, a Black boy who was probably eight or nine years old.

"This is Trevor Lewis," said Sitwell. "He was abducted eighteen months ago while playing in the woods near his house. The FBI received a tip that he might have been used in child pornography." Sitwell pointed to a desktop computer. "If we can match him to a known photograph, it'll help them find and retrieve him."

"Don't you have face-recognition software?"

"It was developed on White adults, so it doesn't work as well on minorities or children. And it doesn't account for aging very well either." Sitwell pulled out the chair in front of the desktop. "In a case like this, the state-of-the-art is human eyes."

Barton sat down, but he swiveled in the chair to face away from the computer. "Are you telling me you want me to look at sicko pictures? That's fucked up."

"If they find the kid, it'll be worth it." Sitwell straightened. "I'll leave you to your work. Call extension 3416 if you get a hit."

Barton spent several minutes just studying the boy, looking at all the innocent pictures his family must have provided, before opening up the FBI database on the computer. Hours passed and he was almost perfectly still except for the little finger twitches that advanced the program to the next photograph. He could feel something heavy and cold and sour forming in his gut, but he kept clicking 'Next'. A few of the pictures could plausibly be innocent, but most decidedly weren't.

Barton wondered how hot water was distributed at SHIELD because he wanted to take a dozen showers in a row, but he kept clicking 'Next'.

Barton found a trash can to vomit in so he wouldn't leave his post, but he kept clicking 'Next'.

It was hours and hours later when Barton dialed 3416. "He's in photo 52-A-439. In the upper left corner."

"Good work, Agent," said Sitwell. "Thank you."

* * *

Once a week, Reverend Mike takes Clint into town to see Barney. He used to watch them real close, but he says now that Clint is baptized, he's going to trust Clint to make good choices. Then he pats Clint on the back and looks real proud.

Barney's living in a group home now and he's angry all the time, but he's got money and he won't say how he got it. He buys Clint hamburgers and french fries and milkshakes.

"I gotta get out of this shit little town," says Barney. "Doesn't matter where. Anywhere's better than here."

Clint snorts. "I got James Dean for a brother. Tell me you're not going to start slicking your hair back."

"You really want to live like this forever, somebody else always steering the ship? We could do something crazy."

"You always want to run away and it never works. You always get caught, dipshit."

"I've got that figured out. I always ran away to someplace stationary. This time, we're going to go someplace that moves."

"What, we're gonna be hoboes? You gonna be Boxcar Barney?" Clint snorts. "And who's this 'we'?"

"I'm really going, and I'm not coming back. If you don't come with me, we ain't never gonna see each other again."

Clint was silent.

"What, you think you got a good thing going now with our friend the Reverend? You're such a fucking moron, Clint. You learned the wrong lesson. You think that 'cause our Daddy was a bastard, you gotta go find yourself a new Daddy, but that ain't how it works. The lesson is, people are bastards. Mike's nice to you now, but don't forget how he threw me out when I wasn't even doing anything wrong."

"I haven't forgot about that, Barney, I haven't." Except, Clint kind of does forget about it sometimes. Barney says the group home is awful and it's a really mean place and he doesn't deserve to be there, but sometimes Clint forgets about that when he's at home and they have lasagna for dinner and he's watching boxing with Reverend Mike on TV.

"It's up to you, Clint. I don't want to make you leave, but I think we can do this and I think we should." Barney steals some of Clint's fries. "You stick with me and I'll look after you. I ain't gonna let anybody hurt my little brother."

That night, Clint throws his clothes and his hunting knife in a backpack and he meets Barney at the edge of town.


	5. Chapter 5

When Clint finds Barney on the edge of town, he's so excited that his hands are shaking. This is really happening. They're really gonna run away and be outlaws. Clint's not stupid and he's not a little kid. He knows it's not going to be like pirates or gangsters in movies, but he doesn't care. Clint is used to poor. Now he's gonna be poor and free.

"I didn't think you'd show," says Barney.

"Shows what you know, you're dumber than a syphilitic squirrel."

"That's a good one."

"Thanks," says Clint and he's smiling so wide it hurts his face. This is what it's going to be like, just bickering brothers. "So what's the plan?"

"We gotta get to Mason City. There's a circus there and I think we can join up with them. It's about sixty miles if we follow the river and we've got six or seven days before they move on to the next town, so even if we have to walk the whole way, we'll be all right, but I bet we can hitch at least part of the trip. Tell 'em we're going to visit relatives or something."

"Why don't we just take the bus?"

"Cause we don't got money for the bus."

"I do," says Clint, his smile morphing into a shy smirk.

"Where'd you get that kind of money?" asks Barney, impressed.

Clint turns and heads down the road toward the bus station. "Reverend Mike's wallet," he says.

"Ha!" shouts Barney triumphantly, trotting to catch up. He tousles Clint's hair and says affectionately, "I knew I kept you around for something."

* * *

Barton's TB titer was down and his chest X-ray was clearing nicely which meant he was cleared for off-base ops. They could use another gun on their mission just south of the Rio Grande. Barton didn't speak any Spanish (except, he informed Coulson, for the sentence 'Te quiero puta,' which apparently translated to 'I like whores.') but that was okay, he wouldn't really have to interact with the locals.

Phil sighed. They had to put him in the field sometime. He called Barton to his office.

"Here are your orders," he said, handing over a black folder. Phil gestured to the grey sofa on the left wall. "Take a seat. Look it over. Tell me if there's anything you don't understand." The op was classified and he didn't want Barton using outside sources to comprehend the text.

Coulson watched as Barton sank down into the couch and began to read the briefing. He read silently, but he moved his lips in what was obviously a painfully slow process. There were diagrams and maps of course, but there were only about a thousand words of actual text.

Barton grabbed a highlighter off of Coulson's desk. Without asking, of course. He made a few short marks and went back to reading.

Several more minutes passed before Barton stood and handed the folder back to Coulson. "The highlighted words," he said. "And that sentence, on the second page."

It really wasn't that many words, though Coulson could have done without the fanged smiley face doodle overlain on the photograph of Joaquín Guzmán Loera. He pronounced each one carefully while Barton snagged a pen (again, without asking) and jotted down notes. From what Phil could see out of the corner of his eye, Barton's spelling was still horrible, though his reading had obviously improved immensely.

"Your handler in the field will be Teong. Don't give him any trouble. This is a simple op."

"Trouble?" asked Barton in a tone of forced disbelief. "Me? I won't be any trouble at all."

Coulson made a mental note to stock up on ibuprofen.

But as it turned out, he didn't need it, not really. The operation went smoothly, all things considered. Two agents injured, neither seriously, and no deaths. Barton disobeyed orders twice: first when he was told to take a certain vantage point and he insisted on an alternate one, and second when he was told to use his gun and he insisted on his bow. He had gotten off three solid shots which took out opposition fire and had even managed to shoot down some poor civilian's laundry to create cover for the advancing ground forces. Teong was pissed, but he'd always been a rigid guy; Barton had followed the orders that mattered.

Coulson leaned back in his chair and allowed a rare full smile to pass over his face as he imagined a Mexican drug cartel entangled in damp linens.

* * *

Barney and Clint make don't make it to the edge of the circus until the next morning because the busses don't run that late at night, but that's fine. Nobody comes looking for them. Clint is still too excited to really think the plan through, to ask why exactly the circus would want to take in two adolescent boys with no particular skills. Instead, he spends the night awake with Barney, skulking around a few blocks off from the bus station and learning to hot wire cars.

By the time they get off the bus in Mason City, Clint is starting to crash a little – he could only be so excited for so long – but he's still got plenty of energy for walking. The circus is on the edge of town, but Mason City isn't a very big place and it isn't long before they can see the big tent that forms the center of the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders.

Barney drags Clint back a few steps by his shirt. "Just let me do the talking, okay?"

Clint nods. Barney is fifteen, almost sixteen and Clint is twelve. Sometimes their age difference doesn't feel that big; sometimes it feels enormous.

They sneak in the camp around the side and Clint wonders if they might make a better impression by paying for tickets, but he trusts Barney and follows him as he slips between trailers and it's not long before they almost run into a man carrying an actual metal sword.

"What are you boys doing back here?" And there's something in his voice that makes Clint think the man really knows how to use a sword as a weapon.

"We want to join your circus," says Barney.

"Now why would we let you do that?"

"We're strong," says Barney, "and we can work."

The man raises one eyebrow, looking condescending and dubious all at once.

"And if you don't let us," adds Barney, "I'll rough up my brother, here, then take him to the police and say you tried to bugger him."

Clint tries not to look surprised, though it's certainly the first he's heard of this plan.

The man with the sword looks furious for the briefest of moments before he laughs, loud and deep. "I like your cheek," he says.

Before he can stop himself, Clint answers, "That really ain't the thing to say when somebody's trying to call you a child molester."

The man laughs again. "I'm Jacques Duquesne." It's a fancy-sounding name, but he says it poor and Southern, just like he's said everything else. He holds out his free hand and the boys shake it.

* * *

Phil Coulson was sitting in the back of an unmarked van when it occurred to him that Clint Barton had been working for SHIELD for a whole year.

And it had been…not that bad, actually. He had gotten a lot less annoying, for one thing.

Except, when Phil thought about it, he realized that Clint hadn't really changed much at all. He still hummed the _Mission Impossible_ theme into the com during ops (or worse, the theme from the _Pink Panther_ ). He still dodged medical and psych evals and failed to turn in any meaningful paperwork. He still spent more time sleeping in the air vents than he did in his actual quarters. And just last week, he had tried to pay Maria Hill a compliment by saying, "Hey, I found a potato that looks like you!" (Although Phil had given no outward sign, he had privately agreed that the resemblance was uncanny.)

Barton turned out to be uncomfortably correct about a lot of other things, too. After ten days of skirting from town to town in Nepal, chasing down the savage spawn of a mad geneticist, Clint had taken a long sip from his Camelback and said, "This isn't gonna be one of those things where it turns out that society is the real monster, is it? Because I am fucking sick of that shit."

It turned out that, no, society was not the real monster. The real monster was a half dozen prion-diseased tigers whose teeth and claws dripped with a venom that apparently disrupted clotting factors. Clint crouched in a tree above the fray, blood dripping from his side, hitting the tigers one after the other.

Phil really, really hated geneticists.

Barton had also memorized an incredible repertoire of song lyrics. He didn't have a particularly good voice, but he wasn't awful. He could always sing along with the radio, unless Phil put on opera or smoky jazz from the 20s. Barton most liked to sing folk songs that he must have picked up in the circus, so Phil often found himself killing time before an op began to the strains of _The Erie Canal_ , _Queen of Argyll_ , or _Rattlin' Bog_. Phil suspected that Clint had invented some of the songs or at least parodied the lyrics. He was vaguely familiar with _What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor_ and he was pretty sure there was no verse suggesting that you _shave his pubes and make him eat them_. Also, no matter how much Clint insisted it had been penned by a blind hillbilly banjo player, Phil was absolutely certain that there was no American folk song entitled _Phil Coulson Was a Steel Drivin' Man_.

* * *

Clint just can't stop being excited. He and Barney are going to live together at the circus!

"I can't believe we get to work with elephants!" says Clint.

"We shovel their shit," says Barney.

"I got to meet three new acrobats," says Clint.

"We carry their water," says Barney.

"They let me help put together the cotton candy machine," says Clint.

"You still don't get to eat any," says Barney.

It turns out Jacques Dusquesne isn't in charge, but he's kind of the right hand man to Carson, who actually owns the setup, and Carson's willing to let Dusquesne make calls like this, so they get introduced to Hodge who handles all the scut work.

Hodge is the guy who makes sure that holes get either dug or mended, that trash gets picked up, and that extension cords and toilet paper and water and food get where they need to go. Everybody knows better than to cross Hodge, because he controls what matters. He has a big blue pickup truck that he drives into town every day to get food and supplies and make sure nobody's covered up their ads.

Clint isn't sure what to think about Hodge. He's a real nice guy, nice to Clint and Barney at least. He makes them work really hard, all day long, and he says if they don't, he won't have any dinner for them that night, but then he gives them ice and cigarettes and candy for Clint and beer for Barney and he tells them who's friendly and who they have to watch out for. On the other hand, Hodge also says some awful things, like that he just don't think White women should date no spics or niggers.

Clint thinks of Mr. Marcus and Miss Jolene and he decides he's going to be polite to Hodge, but not be friends with him like Barney is.

The Barton boys work hard, they work real hard and by the end of the summer they're tanned and they have muscles and Hodge has worked out a place for them to sleep inside – a pair of bunks inside a ring toss game. Even Barney starts to be a little happy about it all.

Things are good, and they stay that way for a long, long while.

* * *

Coulson became Barton's primary handler. It didn't always work that way – it was perfectly possible to recruit someone before passing them off to another supervisor – but Barton worked better for Coulson than he did for anybody else.

Phil was an adaptable man, so he led Barton the way Barton wanted to be led. That meant keeping the micromanagement to a minimum. Instead of assigning Barton a nest, Phil told him the range of target locations he was expected to hit and let him go from there. They came to the same conclusion most of the time anyway.

Phil allowed Barton to take stupid risks, as long as they only endangered himself, not the others or the mission. By 'allowed', Phil meant that he didn't suspend or ground Barton for chasing an armed, aggressive target up the slope of an active volcano (god, Phil hoped he would never have to write those words in that order again), but he did berate him at reasonable intervals for doing so.

And instead of prohibiting Barton's idea of humor, which was immature at best, Phil just played along. After Barton missed a briefing, Coulson ensured he attended the next one by leaving a trail of bird seed from Barton's quarters to the meeting room.

* * *

Clint is thirteen, almost fourteen, and he's going into town with Barney, making a supply run in Hodge's truck. He turns down the radio and before Barney can turn it back up, he blurts out, "So I'm a fag."

Barney swerves the truck all funny, like people do on TV when they're surprised. "Don't joke about shit like that."

Clint waits just a second too long before he says, "Yeah, just joking. Should've seen your face."

"You ain't joking, are you?"

"Nope." Clint looks calm, but he's sitting on his hands for a reason.

"Fuck, Clint," says Barney, "why you gotta do shit like this?"

"Well, it wasn't on purpose," Clint shoots back. "And besides, now I ain't gotta worry about getting a girl pregnant."

Barney snorts, still pissed off and maybe just a shade indignant. "How long you known about this?"

"I dunno. A year, maybe a little longer."

"How come you ain't told me until now?"

Clint rolls his eyes. What the hell kind of question is that? "Cause you're always saying shit about fags, shithead. Just last week you was telling Hodge that AIDS was for turning fruits into vegetables."

"Fuck, I didn't mean it like- Fuck," says Barney. "Why do you gotta make everything so fucking difficult?"

The radio goes back up and they finish the rest of the supply run without talking.

Barney's pissed at Clint for the next few days, but after two weeks, Clint finds a plain paper bag on his bunk after Barney goes on a supply run with Hodge. He opens the bag and inside he finds a box of condoms and a gay porn magazine.

He smiles and he thinks that Barney's forgiven him and everything's okay.

* * *

Coulson found Clint in his quarters, lying back lazily, making a Canadian dollar coin disappear and reappear.

He knocked on the open door. "Barton," he said. "I've got a Christmas present for you."

"I don't celebrate Christmas."

"Doesn't matter. That boy they had you looking for, they found him two days ago. I just got word. He's being returned to his family. I thought you'd like to know."

Barton looked at the coin, spinning it between his fingers before making it disappear again. "Merry Christmas, Coulson."

* * *

Every day, Clint and Barney report to Hodge, but Jacques Duquesne has been keeping an eye on them. Duquesne says he has a soft spot for the Barton boys. He says he admires their ambition and their pluck.

(Clint's not really sure what pluck is, but he supposes it must be a good thing.)

It's a couple months after Clint had his fight with Barney over the whole fag thing and Clint is on water duty, which means filling up old two-liter soda bottles and delivering them all over the camp. They're heavier than they look, and it's a tiring job.

He brings a bottle to Duquesne.

"Just the boy I was looking for," says Duquesne.

"Why?" asks Clint. People usually aren't looking for him unless they think he stole their stuff or something, and Duquesne sounds happy.

"I want to train you up to be in my act. You've got the right build for an acrobat and I'm betting you can learn to handle a sword."

"Oh, I'd love to," says Clint, "I've just got another two hours delivering water for Hodge and then I've got to muck out the elephant stalls and-"

Dusquene laughs. "You're not getting it. I want you to train with me instead of doing all that stuff. It'll be your new job. You finish your water runs, then tell Hodge you work for me. I want you back here by sundown."

Clint pretty much runs (and maybe he even skips a little when he's sure nobody can see him) through the rest of his work and then stops back at his bunk to tell Barney the good news.

"Yeah," says Barney, "that's real great." His voice is flat and he's not really looking at Clint.

Clint knows there's something wrong, but he's not quite sure what it is. He sits on his bunk so he can give his feet a few minutes out of his shoes.

Barney is making a fist and then spreading his fingers wide, over and over again. "That's great," says Barney again and he sounds like maybe he means it a little. "Duquesne's a good man."

So Clint starts training with Duquesne and it's different work from what he was doing with Hodge, but it sure isn't easy. He used to be dead tired by the end of every day; now he's dead tired by noon, but he doesn't care a bit once he does a handspring and a back flip and stages a swordfight on a tightrope.

Barney never stops to watch Clint in the shows. He says he's too busy. Clint hears Barney say to Hodge, "Little fag bastard thinks he's better than me."

* * *

A _West Wing_ fad swept through SHIELD. Clint hadn't really liked the show as it was lacking in both explosions and toplessness, but he had been loathe to give up his usual spot in the lounge and had thus inevitably caught a few episodes, which were then immediately translated into mocking parody.

This took the form of Clint walking through the SHIELD corridors as quickly as possible and shouting out random names, alternating between those of real agents and characters from the show.

"CJ! Parker? Josh. Josh! Wu. Leo?"

He particularly liked to follow Phil around, handing him papers and taking them back while continuing his litany of greetings.

"Coulson! Coulson, Charlie. Charlie, Coulson. Did you see the report report? It was very report-y. Johannson! Sam?"

"Clint," sighed Phil. "I'm-"

"Clint! Frank! CJ! Leo. Josh?"

"Agent Barton!"

"Mr. President!"

* * *

Clint is running through the woods. He's fast, but Duquesne is faster. He could try to make it up into a tree, onto some thin branches that can't bear Duquesne's weight, but he's surrounded by scrub pines and thin, limbless ash trees. He tries zig-zagging because kids are normally more agile than adults, but Duquesne is the exception.

Duquesne grabs at Clint's shirt and knocks him down.

Duquesne hits Clint with the flat of his sword, smacks him hard on the side of his belly.

Clint groans and whimpers as Duquesne works him over, but softly. He knows how to take a beating. It hurts though, it hurts, and it's been a long time since someone's laid into Clint like this.

And then Barney is there, holding a gun. "Get off of him," growls Barney. "What the hell is your problem?" he asks, and Duquesne stalks off.

"What the hell happened?" asks Barney, offering Clint a hand.

"He was stealing from Carson. And I caught him and I told him to-"

"Carson steals from all of us," answers Barney. "We ain't paid what we're worth, none of us are."

"It still ain't right to cheat him."

"You should have kept your mouth shut," says Barney. "Why do you have to go pull shit like this, Clint?"

Clint doesn't say anything. He doesn't have anything else to say.

Barney helps him along as he hobbles back to camp. "Well," says Barney, sounding just the littlest bit satisfied, "I guess you'll be working for Hodge again."

Barney gives him some whiskey to dull the pain and put him to sleep. When Clint wakes up the next morning, he feels like roadkill. Everything hurts and he's dizzy and he wants to vomit. He looks in his hiding spot, a little secret box behind a wooden panel, and he pulls out a full pack of cigarettes he swiped from a customer and saved for a special occasion.

If there's one thing Hodge loves, it's cigarettes. Well, cigarettes and girlie magazines, but Clint could only get those by stealing from other people who work at the circus, and then he would be sort of losing the moral high ground.

Clint is still wearing his clothes from last night when he hobbles over to see Hodge. He holds out the cigarettes.

"I need a day sitting down," says Clint, offering up his bribe. "Just one day. I could take tickets, maybe."

"Shee-ee-eet," says Hodge, giving the expletive at least three syllables. "Your brother said you were okay, just being a dumbass."

"Yeah well, being a dumbass hurts more than it used to."

Hodge looks Clint up and down. "That leg looks bad. You come with me into town today and we'll get it looked at."

They do and there's a hairline fracture stuck in the middle of a lot of swelling. Hodge convinces the doctors not to ask questions and the put a cast on Clint. Hodge pays them in cash. He tells Clint that Duquesne left the circus in the morning, so there's no need for cops sniffing around. Clint sees the wisdom in that. A lot of the people at the circus have records and several have warrants and a few are doing something illegal right now.

Back at camp, Clint does light work for Hodge for a couple of weeks and he covers for some of the games when the usual barker is sick or drunk. He helps with the cooking and Hodge even lets Clint borrow his rifle to shoot them some game for supper.

Things are going better with Barney, now that Clint's working for Hodge again, but Clint can't shake the feeling that Barney thinks Duquesne had the right idea.

It's the rifle that fucks everything up.

Buck Chisholm is standing over Clint, who's sitting in the shade, fixing up a patch in one of the smaller tents. Clint doesn't know Buck real well, just that he's called Trickshot and he does an archery show.

"You been shooting rabbits for supper, boy?" asks Buck.

"Yep," says Clint. He hasn't said 'yessir' even once since running away to the circus and he still enjoys every yup and yeah and yuh-huh.

"You shot 'em through the eyes," says Buck. "Why'd you do that?"

Clint doesn't look up from his patchwork. "Ain't meat in an eyeball, and not much in a head. Anyplace else you shoot 'em, you lose meat. My Daddy taught me that."

"So you did it on purpose," says Buck.

"Naw, I just have them new, fancy eyeball-seeking bullets. Picked them up two towns back."

Buck laughs, genuinely laughs. He says, "I've been looking for someone to train with me, put on a show."

Now Clint looks him in the eye. "You've got to take me and Barney together."

"I don't want the both of you," says Buck. "You're the good shot."

Clint has a bad feeling about the whole idea. Somebody once told him that a gut feeling happens when your brain figures out the conclusion faster than you do. Clint tries to figure out what makes this so bad, but he can't, so he plows ahead. "Both," he says, "or no deal."

Buck furrows his brow and he thinks. Finally, he nods. "All right, I'll give both of you a try, but if he can't keep up, I'm throwing him back to Hodge."

Clint should be happy, but there's a worry in his belly and it feels like lead.


	6. Chapter 6

SHIELD was an insular place, full of people who knew the value of secrecy but were still just human. It was unusual for an agent to be assigned almost exclusively to a single handler and it was unheard of for a handler to be assigned almost exclusively to a single agent.

People noticed and people talked. Coulson was well-known and well-liked, or at least respectfully feared. The same couldn't exactly be said for Barton, who hadn't been around nearly as long and had a strong tendency to annoy his coworkers. The result was that people talked, but they kept speculation to a minimum.

The alternative was apparently the assigning of nicknames. These ranged from the obvious ( _Goofus & Gallant_ or _Felix & Oscar_), to the historically bizarre ( _Caligula & Incitatus_), from the essentially inexplicable ( _Laurel & Hardy_ or _Batman & Robin_), to the completely unacceptable to Phil Coulson ( _Captain America & Bucky_), and finally to the one that stuck ( _Pinky & the Brain_).

It didn't help that Barton did a spot-on impression of the stupid little mouse.

* * *

Barney and Clint start training with Buck in the mornings. Buck usually has a show in the afternoon. At first, they're both awful. It looks so easy, but arrows go wide and arrows fall down inches from the bow and arrows somehow backfire right into the novice archer's face. Buck says he's in no hurry. It's really the off-season and there's no rush to fancy up his act.

Clint's in the middle of a growth spurt and he looks more like Barney than he ever has. There's even talk of bleaching their hair and passing them off as twins. Crowds love twins.

Clint's fifteen years old when he starts sleeping with Buck. It happens in an absurdly straightforward manner.

They're checking arrows for cracks when Buck says, "You ever had a blow job?"

Without missing a beat, Clint says, "Hey, that reminds me, tell your mother I had a great time last night."

"That's a no, then," says Buck. "You want one?"

"Who doesn't?"

"You want one from me?"

There's a level on which Clint knows that's a weird offer, but there are at least two levels on which he is enthusiastically shouting 'yes' before any weirdness can sink in. First of all, he likes Buck and the thought of Buck focusing on no one but him, yeah, that sounds good. And besides, he doesn't want to disappoint Buck. Second of all, who says no to a blow job?

So they go back to Buck's trailer – it's a real one, not a bunk inside a game – and Buck watches Clint strip. He kisses Clint's neck and his chest, but they don't waste a lot of time on foreplay. Clint lays back and Buck starts sucking him off and god, it feels good. It's way better than his own hand.

After Clint finishes, Buck tells him to just lay naked and he looks at him, hungry, while he jerks himself off.

That's how things go for months. Clint isn't sure if Buck is his boyfriend, because they don't really kiss or lie in bed together or do romantic things. When they're together, they're either shooting or fucking.

Buck teaches Clint how men have sex and it's a lot more complicated than it looks in the magazines. And it hurts a little – more than a little – but it feels good, too. Clint wants to try it the other way around, with him on top and Buck's legs sticking up in the air, but that just seems absurd, so he never brings it up.

* * *

The first time Phil said it, they were lying in some godforsaken bunker, objective already achieved, knowing that extraction would be at hours away.

They were both in a lot of pain, but not in immediate danger.

"A jellyfish gun? Seriously?" asked Barton through his grimace. "Was AIM taken over by six-year-old imagineers?"

Phil laughed, just slightly. They had spent the first hour stoically pretending that the stings didn't hurt that much and the second hour systematically trying different techniques to dull the pain. Now they were in hour three and just trying to distract themselves.

"Pinky," said Phil, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

Barton choked out a laugh. "I think so Brain, but if they called him Nick Serenity, he wouldn't be nearly as intimidating."

* * *

Clint is getting steadily better with his bow.

Barney is not. Barney comes back to their bunk when practice is done and he pulls out his bottle of cheap whiskey and drinks it straight. Then, he lays in the dark with his eyes shut and his hands perched on his chest.

Clint's shots all hit the target now, sometimes near the center and sometimes not, but he's past the point of misfires.

Barney still can't seem to get the hold position right and when he waits for Buck to correct him, he drops it before even a minute is up. When he releases the arrow, he can't seem to do it smoothly, so it angles up or down.

Buck gives them a rest while he talks to Carson about scheduling.

Barney sits on the grass and he lays his hands in his lap, fingers slightly bent, and all of a sudden Clint knows exactly what's wrong: Barney's fingers were broken and they never healed quite right.

Clint knew that before, of course, but he never thought about it. Barney went out of his way to hide it, keeping his hands in fists or behind his back or in his pockets so no one would see the way his right middle finger didn't really curve with the others or the way his left index finger was angled away from his thumb. And Barney wasn't drinking because he was mad or bored, he was drinking because it hurt, because it must hurt something awful to make your fingers do something they can't over and over again.

Clint tries to think if it's better if he says something or better if he doesn't. Barney always did get real mad if anyone talked about his hands, and he must hide them for a reason. Clint's not sure what to do, but it doesn't end up mattering because Buck takes Barney aside and tells him to go back to Hodge, because he's not cut out to be an archer.

Barney stomps off.

Buck says to Clint, "I'm sorry kid, I gave him a chance, but he wasn't getting any better."

And what Buck says is true, so Clint nods. Barney's fingers are weak and they bend funny. He could never really draw the string back and let it go without his hands making weird little twitches, let alone learn about aiming. And it probably wasn't going to get any better, at least not without some really good doctors to fix whatever healed wrong. "Yeah," says Clint, "I know."

"I gotta start suiting up in about an hour," says Buck. "You want to sixty-nine?"

* * *

The next time it happened, they were in Romania, camping in some dingy little upstairs room. Literally camping, because the only heat they got was what rose up from the rooms below. They had been there eight days so far and they knew they could be waiting as many as ten more before they got the signal.

Barton was lying on his back in his sleeping bag, trying to blow smoke rings with his breath and (sort of) succeeding.

"They teach you that in the circus?" asked Coulson.

"It was a very educational experience."

"I'm sure it was."

"I learned how to pound nails up my nose."

"That just demonstrates how empty your head is."

Barton snorted and looked at his watch. It was December 24th. "I can hold down the fort for a little bit if you've got calls to make," he said.

Coulson shook his head.

"You don't have family?"

"This isn't Oprah, Barton."

Barton scowled and shimmied up into a sitting position, never leaving the sleeping bag. He rummaged in his pack before tossing Coulson a small plastic jar of petroleum jelly. "Merry Christmas, Coulson," he said. "Now it won't hurt so much when you pull that stick out of your ass."

Coulson smiled, just a little.

They went back to their routines: calisthenics, scanning local radio frequencies, forcing down MREs, idly singing the entire discography of _The B-52s_ (Barton only), and reviewing briefings for other missions (Coulson only).

After several hours, Coulson stood. "You've got the sat-phone for the next half-hour?"

Barton nodded. "Sure. We're not going to get the call tonight."

"Probably not," Coulson agreed, before bundling up and shuffling out the door.

Coulson returned exactly thirty minutes later to find Barton picking and examining his belly button lint. Coulson held out a red cardboard box. "It's your Christmas present, Barton."

"I don't celebrate Christmas."

Coulson took off the lid. "That's all right," he said, "the box is empty."

"You're hilarious."

"I was going to get you a time machine, so you could go back to the Middle Ages and be relevant, but the selection around here is pretty poor."

"My gift was better," said Barton, tipping his head toward the Vasoline.

"You speak too soon," said Coulson, unzipping his jacket. Inside were two bottles of some kind of thick, amber liquor. He passed one to Barton and they clinked a wordless toast.

Another hour passed and they felt much warmer than they were.

"Pinky," said Coulson, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

Barton smirked. "I think so, Brain, but how will we teach the reindeer to tango?"

Coulson smirked back.

* * *

Barney doesn't come back until late that night and he's roaring drunk. He drags Clint out of his bunk and he's plenty strong.

"You think you're better than me?" he asks. He backhands Clint across the face and Clint is getting that two-places-at-once feeling again, like he's at the circus, but he's also in Mama and Daddy's trailer and they're mad because Clint told the wrong lie about Barney's fingers and the government people are going to come poking around and Daddy hits him backhand across the face and then he and Mama go for a drive and they die, just like Clint prayed for except he didn't pray for Mama to die, just Daddy.

"You think you're better than me, you little fag bastard?" Barney shoves Clint backward. He holds his hands up and even in silhouette, Clint can see that the shape isn't quite right. "I did this for you, you ungrateful brat!"

And Clint had forgotten about that part, too. Not forgotten, not really, but he didn't like to think about it, so he didn't think about it. But yes, that was true. Barney got his fingers broke because he was taking a beating for Clint. Clint swallows and takes a sharp breath.

"You ain't got loyalty! You ain't got honor! You're a cocksucker, you're a whore. He's only keeping you around because he wants someplace to stick it and you're the goddamn fag-slut he was looking for." Barney turns his wrists slowly, looking at his hands in the darkness. "I did this for you, and you just…you just…" A disappointed, angry huff of air. "Get out of here. I don't want to see you round no more. You like Buck so much, you stay in his trailer."

Clint is frozen in place, staring at Barney's hands.

Barney shakes him by the shoulders. "Go on then, get out!"

Clint does leave. He doesn't even take any of his things with him. It's not like he has much anyway. He leaves their bunk, but he doesn't go to Chisholm's trailer. He goes to the empty big top instead and climbs up to the platform that anchors one end of the high wire. He sits in the middle of the platform and hugs his knees to his chest. It's the first time in a long time that Clint really feels like an orphan.

He tries to tell himself that Barney will come around. Barney came around on the fag thing, didn't he? He gave Clint the gay magazine. But then, he just called Clint a cocksucking whore so maybe he didn't really get over that one. Barney came around about Duquesne, sort of. He was angry that Duquesne picked Clint, but he saved Clint anyway. That has to count for something. And even if it was a long time ago, Barney took a beating that was meant for Clint and got his fingers broken so badly they still weren't really fixed.

Clint sits up and lets his feet dangle off the edge. He swings them just a little and sings softly to himself. He stays that way until dawn.

* * *

Every once in a while, the staff in Psych got it into their heads that they needed a formal workup on Barton, since they never got a real baseline.

Coulson suspected that if he really pressed the issue with Barton at this point, he'd comply, but he didn't see the need, other than Psych's curiosity and wounded pride. The whole idea of an eval was that you got to know the agent _before_ you put him in the field, but Barton had been running very successful field ops for two years now, and Coulson had gotten to know him the old-fashioned way.

Political affiliations? No, he was astonishingly apolitical. Barton had never voted in a single election and was only registered because it was in the pile of forms his army recruiter had handed him.

Ties to subversive groups? It was obvious that Barton's circus had been rife with low-level criminals, but they weren't ideologues and they didn't commit the types of crimes SHIELD would be concerned with. Pickpockets and small-time cons weren't on Fury's radar.

Hotspots? Barton didn't particularly like it when he had to shoot women, but he would if they deserved it or of they shot him first. He had a soft attitude toward drug users and a hard attitude toward drug suppliers, but so did half of SHIELD. Ops against human traffickers seemed to hit Barton hard, but they had that effect on a lot of people.

How to manage him, how to motivate him? This was why Coulson was glad he hadn't gotten the original Psych report, because his actions would have been less authentic, and it was solidity and reliability that Barton responded to best.

Barton was lying upside-down on the sofa in Coulson's office, juggling a ball of paper back and forth with his feet. He was waiting for Coulson to finish their mission notes so he could sign off and go to bed.

"Gee Brain," said Barton, "what are we going to do tonight?"

"The same thing we do every night," said Coulson, "try to take over the world."

* * *

Life returns to normal – normal for a pack of carnies anyway.

An older man they call Boxcar who worked as a barker for games of chance gets kicked by a horse and dies.

Louie gets new strings for his guitar and to celebrate, he spends the night taking requests.

Long Jimmy and his girl LeAnne find out their baby is deaf. Clint offers to help them learn sign language and he's surprised by how much he remembers. Jimmy gets some books and they all practice together.

Barney doesn't talk to Clint at all. He's working on something with Hodge, something secret. Clint thinks they might be running drugs, but he can't prove it.

Clint practices all day long, whether Buck is there or not. He trains until it's too dark to see and even then, he can feel the muscles twitching and see arrows flying out of the corner of his eye.

Clint goes into town one night and he starts smashing car windows. He doesn't take anything, he just likes to see the glass break into a million tiny bits of useless rubble. Nothing from something. He gets away with it the first time.

The next time Clint goes into town, he's spoiling for a fight and he finds it. The cops pick him up and Buck convinces them not to press charges.

The third time Clint goes into town, he brings a crowbar and smashes up some gravestones. Always the ones in pairs, husbands and wives who lived long happy lives together with their big happy families. Buck lets him stew in a jail cell overnight before he comes with Carson to bail him out.

"Look," says Carson, "everybody and their cousin knows that you and your brother are bickering, but we depend on the goodwill of these towns to get permits and customers. If they're going to see an upswing in crime every time we pass through, that's real bad for business. So you gotta get your head on straight, boy, or I'm gonna have to drop you and I don't want to do that."

Buck takes him back to the circus and they have sex in the morning heat before it's time for Buck to get ready for his act.

Clint heads out into the midday haze to practice his archery.


	7. Chapter 7

Buck Chisholm is not a fool. He has his faults. He drinks and he gambles and sometimes he does both at the same time, which is why he owes a lot of people a lot of money. But he's not a fool, which is why he always has a backup plan.

He decides to try his plan A on a Friday night, after he performs with Clint. The kid is getting good, better than Buck, really, and he gets drunk on the cheering crowd. Clint's always wired after a show, lapping up praise and looking genuinely happy.

When they get back to the trailer, Buck unlaces his boots and says, "Guys like you and me, we got dealt a raw hand in life."

Clint grabs a beer from the mini-fridge and passes one to Buck. "Speaking of raw hands, you should ice those fingers or they're gonna swell."

Buck tilts his head gratefully and he takes Clint's advice – he holds the beer against the inside of his knuckles where the string has rubbed them raw. "You know what I mean, Clint. We work hard, we're not idiots. How many hours do you think we work in a week?"

"I dunno, I never thought about it."

"Well, I have, and it's a lot. And we're still poor as fuck. Meanwhile, there's guys in the cities who had it all handed to them who shuffle papers for forty hours a week in some air-conditioned office building who make enough money to buy and sell this circus twice over."

"I don't think I'd like working in an office," says Clint. "Bet you have to be all polite and stuff."

"That's not the point. The point is about fairness, justice even."

Clint's taking off his shirt and sliding down his leggings at the same time, that weird purple getup he inherited when Blinking Mikey retired and went back to Alaska. "I hear you," he says absently.

"What if we could make things right, even the score a bit?"

"What, you want to rob a bank? I'll tell you right now, I call Clyde, you have to be Bonnie."

"No, what if we could do it without hurting anybody? We wouldn't even be doing anything wrong."

"Is this gonna be about Amway? Or Jesus?"

"God, you're a smart ass. You're lucky you're good in bed." Buck stops to take a long sip of his beer. "We find some houses that look real nice. Nobody ever locks their second-story windows, and you still got all that acrobat skill. You get us in when nobody's home, we take a few things and hock 'em. People like that, they've got insurance that'll pay them back for what got stolen so it all evens out. Everybody wins."

Clint looks skeptical, even though he's not exactly sure what's wrong with Buck's logic. "You want to break into people's houses and rifle through their stuff? That's kind of creepy."

Buck flicks Clint's ear. "I don't want to take their photo albums and underwear, just some jewelry, maybe a TV. Remember, they'll get it all back from the insurance company."

"It still don't seem right to me," says Clint, stripped down to his underwear and starting in on his second beer.

"Whatever," says Buck. He's leaning back, enjoying the view. "Forget about it."

* * *

"I think we should push up the timeline, sir," said Barton. "The longer we wait, the more time we give Srivastava's people to plant more land mines around the perimeter."

Coulson grinned slightly from across the room. Despite his exceedingly lowbrow manner, Barton's expertise had finally won him some respect and senior officers now accepted his input. Barton had, in turn, responded by rising to meet their expectations.

Fury shook his head. "We still don't know what's going on in there and I want to find out where they're getting their arms from."

"Then we dig serial numbers out of the rubble," answered Hill. "We're fast approaching the point at which a land assault just isn't feasible."

Fury rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Can we get at the compound another way?"

Hill shook her head. "Tactical says the terrain and the cloud cover make an aerial landing impossible. The Kashmir terrain doesn't do us any favors."

"You don't have to land," said Barton. "Take a helicopter, get inside the cloud layer. I can shoot from there."

Hill looked skeptical. "How are you going to aim?"

Barton scoffed. "Infrared imaging and awesomeness."

* * *

Buck is no idiot. He knew that just asking Clint might not work because that boy could be awfully stubborn sometimes. He waits a few weeks and lets Clint forget about the whole thing, but Buck has a backup plan and it means bringing in somebody he's got a lot in common with.

Clint is doing handsprings, back and forth in a small clearing, when he hears a loud, deliberate cough. He looks up and there's Barney.

"You're pretty good at that," says Barney.

Clint's not sure what to say, so he spits on the ground and takes a long drink of water.

Barney settles cross-legged on the ground. He picks up dead leaves and crushes them, watching the bits flutter to the ground. "I've seen you in some of your shows. It's impressive. A little scary, actually, how good you are." Barney looks up, but he's still not actually looking at Clint, more like looking near him or past him. "Trick Shot teach you all that shooting stuff?"

"Some of it."

"He treating you right?"

"What's it to you?"

"You're my brother," says Barney, "nobody's allowed to pick on you but me."

Clint's still not sure what's going on, if this is some kind of trick. "He treats me fine," says Clint.

"That's good," says Barney. He takes a deep breath and then, "I- look, I've been too hard on you. Maybe I get jealous because it seems like you've got it made and I, well…You got your act and I ought to just be happy for you." He mutters something to himself that Clint can't make out. "I just, I don't want to live like this. I want to sleep in an actual bed and have a real heater in the winter. I want to get my teeth pulled by an actual dentist when they're rotten, not just by whoever's got pliers and a steady hand. That's not crazy, is it?"

"No," says Clint, "a lot of people want that stuff." Clint thinks, it was crazy for you to flip out at me about it, though. And then not talk to me for months and months. Clint sits down on the grass.

"You know what I think I want to do?" asks Barney. "I want to go to the city and get an apartment and work as a cook. Not a fancy chef like in some snooty restaurant, but like a line cook in a diner. I think I'd be good at that."

"You want to move to the city?" asks Clint. "Which one?"

"Milwaukee, maybe. I'd have to think it over. You could come too, if you wanted, but I understand you've got your act and your…uh, boyfriend. But I wouldn't be too far if you wanted to come visit, maybe stay over in the off season."

Clint's not really hearing exactly what his brother is saying. What he's hearing is, 'We're brothers again, we're brothers again' and he never knew how much he wanted to hear that.

Barney stands up. "I know you've got to practice," he says. "I don't want to take up too much of your time."

"It's okay," says Clint. Then he adds, "Are you thinking about leaving soon?"

Barney sighs and shakes his head. "Thinking about it, sure, but it's not going to happen. It takes money to move on like that. Can't get a job without an address, but nobody'll rent to you if you don't have a job, unless you can pay a lot upfront."

"Well that ain't fair," says Clint.

"Tell me about it," says Barney. "Your friend Buck had an idea for making some money quick, but I guess it fell through." He shrugs. "I guess he needs an acrobat to pull it off."

* * *

They were on a train, a freight train, not a passenger vehicle, and would be for another ten hours. The James Bond movies left out all the boredom and the waiting.

Barton edged away from the walls of shipping container. "Canada smells funny," he decreed.

"I'm pretty sure that's just you."

"It smells like moose balls."

"You've never been close enough to a moose to smell it. No moose in the circus."

Barton glared. "I could have been to a zoo."

"I know you didn't."

"You know everything."

Coulson shrugged humbly.

"I don't know much about you." Barton sounded philosophical.

"You don't need to know much about me. What more do you want to know?"

Barton squinted. He evidently hadn't really thought that far ahead. "How much can you bench press?"

"Usually about 250. Up to 270 on a good day."

"That's not bad."

"I'm glad my weightlifting regimen meets with your approval."

"I mean, it's not bad for a desk jockey."

"A desk jockey who saved your ass twice this week."

"The second one doesn't count. I could've taken her on my own."

"Barton, it was a grizzly bear."

"Your mom's a grizzly bear."

* * *

Here's how it works.

Buck drives them up to a house that he scouted earlier that day. Sometimes they have to check two or three houses to find one where nobody's home, but it's really not too hard to figure out. Clint makes his way up to a second-story window and Buck is right, they're never locked. Clint shimmies in and makes his way down to the side door or the back door and he unlocks it. He carries cheeseburgers just in case there are dogs.

Once Clint unlocks a door on the ground floor, Buck and Barney come inside and get looking for valuable stuff while Clint plays lookout. Buck smiles fondly and says, "Your hawk eyes come in handy." They take anything valuable and small because Buck's only got a station wagon, not a truck and because if they try to carry a huge stereo or a big screen TV, they're a lot more likely to get caught. They take jewelry, cash, smaller electronic things like Gameboys and Walkmans. They take pills that have a street value. Sometimes collected stuff if it's easy to find, like fancy coins that are worth something. They take guns, nice shoes, full bottles of fancy perfume, cameras, and power tools.

All three of them always wear gloves.

They hang onto the stuff for a little while until the circus moves on to the next town. Then they mix up stuff from a couple of jobs and Buck takes it to a pawn shop to hock.

Buck brings them back the money and they split it three ways. Barney tells Clint that he thinks Buck might be trying to cheat them, lying about how much he actually got from the pawn broker, but Clint's starting to suspect that Barney always think's somebody's cheating him.

Clint thinks it's maybe wrong what they're doing, but insurance will replace the stuff, like Buck said, and some people like Barney really do need the money and it's hard for Clint to think about anything except for the fact that he and Barney are brothers again.

* * *

Honestly, the op hadn't been that difficult. Most of the guards were hired muscle who had no interest in dying for a job that had refused to pay up front. But now, they were in the middle of a swamp in a collapsing building full of terrified girls and women who spoke no English and had no idea what was happening.

SHIELD had a Thai interpreter along for the mission, which covered about a third of the women, some of whom could then translate into other local languages, but at least a dozen remained cut off. Even those who could understand the interpreted message of peace obviously distrusted it, huddling close to one another and keeping a watchful eye on the invading foreigners.

Barton was still scouring the corridors to ensure that they hadn't missed any of the guards or traffickers.

"Second floor west is clear," he said."

"Acknowledged," answered Coulson. He was hanging back to the greatest extent possible. In sex trafficking cases, female agents tended to elicit a better response from victims than their male counterparts.

"This place is disgusting," said Barton as he cleared another claustrophobic room. "Remind me to never complain about another Estonian bedsit again."

"I'll put it on your calendar next time you go to Estonia," said Coulson. The action portion of the op was over. A little chatter was fine.

"I never look at my calendar."

"I never expected you to stop complaining."

There was another thud as Barton opened another door. "Aw shit," he said, "there's a kid in here. She's trying to hide under her little blanket."

"Is she injured? Can you just carry her downstairs?"

"Yeah, uh, wait a minute." Barton pulled out his earpiece and knelt down on the floor. He didn't mind dirt and grime. He did mind sewage, but he'd scrambled through more than one sewer in his brief career at SHIELD. He had really been hoping not to touch this floor.

He opened up a pouch in his belt and pulled out some flash cubes; they wouldn't activate without the starter. "Hey," he said, knowing full well she probably didn't speak any English. "Hey, look at this." She still didn't emerge from under the blanket, but Barton took the cubes and started to juggle them. He could be patient, he could juggle three objects for a very long time.

Twenty minutes later, he rejoined the crew on the first floor, a little girl walking behind him.

"What took you so long?" asked Hill.

Barton tipped his head toward the little girl.

"Yes, I'm sure forty pounds of extra weight slowed you down."

"I was waiting for her to come along on her own," said Barton. "I didn't want to be one more guy pushing her around."

Hill looked like she was about to say something, but she nodded instead. "Lead her over to Agent Anantasu. Let's hope she speaks Thai. And put your goddamn communicator back in."

* * *

They pull up to a yellow house with dark red trim and no cars. Clint slips in through a guestroom upstairs and then unlocks the side door to let Buck and Barney inside.

Clint crouches just outside the door to keep watch.

He's only there for a moment before he hears the beginning of a scream, cut off into muffled noise. He hesitates and wonders why he hesitates, but then he decides that wondering if for sissies and runs right into the house.

He runs up the stairs and he sees Buck and Barney in the master bedroom with an old woman, wrapping tape around her mouth and her hands. They look back at him.

Buck speaks first. "Go back downstairs, kid. We've got this."

Clint doesn't move. The old woman is crying, making little whimpering noises.

"Move it," says Barney. "You've got a job. Go do it."

"Let her go," says Clint. "We can just find a different house."

"Are you nuts?" asks Barney. "She's seen our faces! We can't let her go."

The next moment feels very long to Clint, as he figures out what 'can't let her go' means and the old woman's face gets long and deep and Clint is beginning to see how this is going to end.

"No," says Clint. "Leave her alone. Or I'll call the police." He's surprised by the words coming out of his mouth, but that doesn't mean he wants to take them back.

No one moves for a moment, so Clint lets fly a few blunted rounds, enough to knock the handset off the base and hit 0 for operator. They'll figure out something's wrong if they listen long enough.

Three arrows fly from Buck's bow and Clint is pinned to the hallway wall by his clothes. He starts to struggle down but Barney comes after him with the duct tape, binding up his ankles and his wrists before he can get any traction.

"You stupid kid," says Barney. "You stupid, stupid kid."

* * *

Coulson caught up with Barton on the shooting range. Barton was blindfolded. Every few seconds, a chime would play as a target emerged and Barton would fire in the direction of the sound. "A couple of messages for you. First of all, medical says that if they have to chase you down again to make you complete your rabies vaccination series, they're going to lock you in a crate with a funny-looking raccoon and let nature take its course."

"Are we talking funny like ha-ha or the other kind?"

"You'd have to ask Medical. Preferably while they're giving you rabies shots."

"The bat wasn't rabid." The chime went off again and Barton fired without hesitating.

"This wouldn't be an issue if you had left it alone."

"That bat could've had valuable intel."

"You were trying to train it to do tricks," said Coulson. "If you think that's a goal that merits ongoing rabies prophylaxis, be my guest."

Barton scowled, then fired off another shot. "And the other message?"

* * *

Buck and Barney flee, leaving Clint to take the rap. They never taped up his mouth, so he talks to the old woman, telling her the police are coming and things are going to be okay. Clint is slow to free himself. He knows some escape tricks and he can dislocate his left thumb pretty easily, but escape tricks are different from really escaping and besides, Clint's got a lot on his mind.

He remembers what Barney told him a long time ago, that people are bastards and Clint feels like the world's biggest fool for taking so long to figure that out. Everybody's really out for themselves in the end – you can use them, you can help them, or you can stay the fuck away, but you sure as hell better stop looking for friends and brothers and daddies, because there's nobody like that in this world.

It's a lonely thought, but that doesn't bother Clint too much. He gets the tape off his hands just a minute or two before the police show up. When they take him in, he admits that he was helping rob the house, but he didn't want the old lady to get hurt. The old lady backs up Clint's story, and since he's a minor, they let him off light: juvenile detention for the next six months, until he turns eighteen.

Clint floats through juvie. He does terrible at the classes, but so does everybody else. He doesn't make friends and he doesn't make enemies. Nobody comes to visit him and he doesn't try to contact anybody. The only thing that bothers him is they take his bow, but he makes a spitball gun out of a pen barrel and practices with that. It's good enough for six months.

On his eighteenth birthday, they let him out. Clint doesn't go back to the circus. He hitchhikes into the city and finds a recruiter says he wants to join the army.

He fails the test. He fails the goddamn test.

Clint tells the recruiter how well he can shoot. Maybe the recruiter believes him. Maybe he takes pity on Clint or maybe he's just got quotas to fill. He tells Clint that he can work things out for Clint to take the test again in six months. The recruiter even gives him a book to study so he'll score better next time.

Clint can handle six months. He does odd jobs and day labor when he can. He sleeps in shelters and under bridges. He doesn't beg – it's not a pride thing, he just doesn't think of himself as the kind of person who needs that. His is a temporary situation. Begging is for the crazy people and the ones with no legs, the ones who are stuck like this forever. (It's hard to be ashamed in front of people like that, so Clint trades them money or food to help him read his army test book.) He does steal, a couple dollars or a bite to eat here and there. He's not above eating out of trash cans. He gets a P.O. box and he writes to Carson to ask for his last paycheck because he figures it can't hurt and wonder of wonders, Carson sends it to him, so that buys food for a good long while.

Six months is almost up when Clint decides to check his P.O. box. There's a note from Carson explaining that Barney got in trouble with the law running guns and drugs and it ended bad. It's 10% sympathy and 90% if-you-want-his-stuff-get-it-soon.

Clint throws the letter away and gets back to studying his army test book.

* * *

"The other message is from Information Security. They want to know why Phil Coulson is suddenly so very interested in Midwestern penitentiaries."

"Why are they asking me? Seems like they should be asking Phil Coulson." Barton lowered his bow, though the range targets kept appearing and chiming at irregular intervals.

Coulson sighed. "I know your brother is alive, Barton."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry for the delay. Life took over for a little while. Only one (short) chapter remains.**

"I know your brother's alive," said Coulson.

"That's none of your goddamn business," snapped Barton, knuckles clenching white on his bow.

"We ran a background check, Barton. Did you really think we would miss something like that?"

Barton was silent for a moment, looking alternately at Coulson and the wall to his left. "You ran a background check on _me_. Not him."

"I never mentioned it because you've never given any sign that it would affect your ability to function in a professional capacity. Until you decided to steal my login and start contacting prisons, I was perfectly happy to give you plenty of privacy. But yes, it's SHIELD policy to do a comprehensive investigation."

Barton looked pointedly to the side. "Would the court stenographer please read back the part where I apparently give a damn about SHIELD policy?" He cocked a hand to his ear. "Not in the transcript? Yeah, that's what I thought."

Coulson exhaled slowly, which for him was practically a sigh. "Two years before you signed up with SHIELD, we had an agent by the name of Paquin. He was a good agent. He and three others were embedded with a group called the Red Hand, a criminal organization with ties to prostitution, gambling, and most of all, drugs. Paquin had an informant, a deeply unimpressive little man who only wanted to save his own skin, but he was getting us the meetings and the records we needed. One day, without warning, Paquin lost it and murdered his informant. Beat the man to death. It was unprecedented, a complete surprise.

Coulson paused and rubbed his thumb in a circle against his forefinger. "Of the three other agents on the operation, two were executed by the Red Hand. One survived without injury. The whole operation was ruined and we lost all of our objectives."

"What happened to Paquin?" asked Barton.

"He hanged himself in a SHIELD holding cell."

"I'm not Paquin."

"I agree. If you went crazy, it wouldn't be unprecedented and it wouldn't be a surprise."

"It was my life, not yours. And you should have stayed the fuck out of it." Barton shook his head. "Man, I thought you were-" He closed his mouth, cutting himself off.

And then Barton did something strange and worrying: he dropped his bow on the ground. Without saying another word, he walked off the range.

* * *

Barton left SHIELD headquarters that night – Coulson saw the clockout on his leftmost monitor. At least he had the good sense to tap out instead of sneaking off and trying to trip up SHIELD security equipment. It wasn't like he didn't have every right to go off base without supervision or check-ins.

He was, if history held, probably looking for a good bar where he would consume a solid quart of whiskey and hustle a few strangers by pretending to have no idea how to play darts. If Barton made his way to the Midwest, Coulson would become a bit concerned, but until then Coulson would assume that Barton just needed to blow off some steam.

Besides, there was paperwork. There was always paperwork.

Coulson made more coffee.

Two days passed and Barton still hadn't returned, though there was no indication he had left the city. Coulson made no attempt to contact him. Barton would return or he wouldn't.

Coulson sat through a briefing on instability in biomechanical engineering and found that he had developed a phantom Clint. Like a phantom limb, a phantom Clint existed only in the perceiver's mind, as a series of reflexive sensations and reactions. The phantom Clint kicked Coulson's chair and slouched in his own. The phantom Clint made unhelpful comments about the presenter's admittedly ridiculous mustache. The phantom Clint could be managed with a nod or a raised eyebrow, because he trusted Coulson not to hold him back unless it was actually, truly necessary. Because he trusted Coulson.

Fuck.

The meeting ended and Coulson pulled out his cell to check his messages. There were three, all from Barton.

_i know its driving you crazy so ill tell you that i got your login codes by waching your hands reflecton in the coffee can while you type_

_i can see it becuse i have good eyes dont worry your login is secyur_

_but your password is dumb your still an asshole see you tomorrow_

A peace offering. Sort of. The penultimate jab wasn't called for, Coulson felt. C/\pTin1776/\m3r1ca was a perfectly secure password.

Coulson wondered if there was a way to install spell check on Barton's phone. And he felt a little relieved – just a little. Would be a pain to break in a new sniper.

* * *

Coulson waited a day after Barton returned before he tried to talk to him. After checking the lounge and the gym and the range, he rapped on the door to Barton's quarters. Most of the nearby rooms were empty; it was Christmas Eve and they were down to essential staff only. Perhaps because the hallway was deserted (or maybe Barton never gave a damn), Coulson could hear strains of Winnie-the-Pooh's _Heffalumps and Woozles_ coming from Barton's room, along with Barton's voice, singing along off-key.

Coulson knocked again.

Barton opened the door. "Oh," he said flatly, "you have a mission for me?"

Coulson shook his head and stood in the doorway. He could be a very patient man.

Barton tried to stare him down for a few moments before backing up and gesturing for Coulson to come in. "I'm not Paquin," he said."

"No, you're not. And I didn't need your file to know that. Which is why," he paused and opened his briefcase. He pulled out a file folder two inches thick and handed it to Barton. "Which is why this is your Christmas present. It's everything in your file that came from your background check." He reached into the briefcase again. "And this," he said, holding up a thick-tipped black Sharpie. "You can redact whatever you'd like."

Barton's expression registered somewhere between puzzled and panicked. His brow was furrowed but his eyes were wide.

"You were right," said Coulson. "I thought it over, and came to the conclusion that you were right. Frankly, it was a strange sensation and I'd rather it not happen to frequently, so try to make some errors in the near future."

Barton held the file in one hand and the marker in the other. "I…don't celebrate Christmas," he said, still obviously confused by what was happening. "And neither do you."

"I celebrate Christmas."

"But you didn't call your family."

"Also true."

"And I know they're not all dead because I read your email."

"You don't make yourself easy to like."

"So what," said Barton, "they just don't like you being gay or something?"

Coulson supposed that he shouldn't have been surprised that Barton had figured that out – good eyes and all – nor surprised that he brought it up in such a tactless way. Denying it would be similarly pointless. "No," he said, "they have no problem with that."

"So what's the deal?"

Coulson's eyes twitched to the folder in Barton's hand and he felt the urge to refuse to answer diminishing. "I was raised Quaker," he said.

"Like the oats guy?"

"Actually, Quaker oats have nothing to do with…never mind. It's a religion, essentially, although there are atheist Quakers. Most Quakers are pacifists. Many don't even believe it's acceptable to use force in personal self-defense. When I joined the Marines and, later, SHIELD, it…it wasn't received well."

"Wait, they kicked you out because of some pussy peace thing?"

"They didn't kick me out and watch how you talk about my family, Agent Barton. We disagree on something very fundamental. In their eyes, I am a good person who has done many terrible things."

Clint held his breath for a moment before opening up the file folder. The first few pages were documents about his birth. Then the documentation skipped a few years until his kindergarten transcript and social services' documentation of his and his brother's condition when they were removed from his parents' trailer. There were handwritten and typed notes along with two dozen yellowed Polaroid photographs of cigarette burn scars and welts in the shape of belt buckles. Coulson had already seen all of these, probably before Barton had even returned to the United States from his tour of duty in Iraq.

Barton didn't like the thought of it, the idea that he was pitied before he even showed up at SHIELD headquarters, the idea that people might see him as small or weak or damaged.

"Are you just going to sit here and watch me go through this?" asked Barton, uncapping the marker.

"I'm not allowed to give you access to the file in the first place, let alone allow you to destroy data."

Barton held the marker tip to his nose and inhaled deeply, rolling his eyes back into his head.

Coulson's lips turned up ever so slightly. He pulled out his laptop and they both began to work in silence. He looked up every so often to see Barton squinting at the pages, lips moving as he read, redacting carefully.

It was almost an hour before anyone spoke. "You know," said Barton, "if it was me, if I had a family and the only problem was they thought I was a good guy who did bad things, I would call them on Christmas."

"Your perspective is appreciated."

"I know. I'm like Dr. Phil over here."

"More like Dr. Doom."

"I got way better fashion sense than Dr. Doom."

"Barton, I've met homeless schizophrenics with better fashion sense than you."

"Crazy Mike doesn't count. He used to be a model."

The both laughed quietly, but not quite silent.

"Pinky," said Coulson, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"Well, I think so, Brain, but I don't think ferrets are allowed to play hockey."

Coulson smiled softly. "So when does your brother get out?"

"He's up for parole in May."

"Do you want him out or in?"

"I don't know."

"You're not a little kid anymore, Clint. He can't manipulate you. I trust you to make your own decisions and make good ones."

"You called me Clint." The muscles in Barton's back were tensed, but those in his face were slack. Coulson almost seemed like someone that could be relied on.

"Yes, I did."

Barton smirked and tipped his head at the clock. "You want to get some dinner? There's a few Jewish guys in R&D who have their annual Chinese takeout. We could split the bill with them. And, I could make a few alterations to their blueprints while we're over there."

Coulson wrinkled his brow for a moment, considering. "Yes to dinner. But you're leaving the Sharpie here."

* * *

On December 26th, Phil Coulson picked up a few belated Christmas cards from the corner store. He addressed them to his parents and his sisters. The note he jotted inside was brief, just the typical I'm fine, how are you, happy holidays, but maybe it was better than saying nothing.

* * *

It was February and they had been woken in the middle of the night to board a cargo plane headed for Minsk. The mercenary SHIELD had been tracking, the Black Widow, had surfaced and they wanted their best sniper on the case.

Barton slept on the floor of the transport, arms and legs flung about inelegantly. Coulson took the opportunity to study their target's file and the details of the mission briefing. He reviewed and memorized contacts' names. He studied maps and sketched auxiliary diagrams linking them together. They always slept in shifts out of habit, even if they weren't in explicit danger.

After six hours in the air, Barton woke, stretched, groaned, and took a long piss. While Coulson slept in a neat, compact coil, Barton took up the file. He could read reasonably well now – spelling continued to elude him – but he was still slow, especially when the pages were full of Russian names and places. He sounded out the difficult words, whispering unfamiliar syllables aloud as he learned everything SHIELD knew about the dead-eyed red-haired assassin named Natalia Romanova.

What he read made his stomach sink. He couldn't picture himself shooting her; the image just wouldn't come, which meant there was something in his gut that said it was the wrong move.

Barton had killed quite a lot of people in his life, all of whom had either been trying to kill someone at the moment or very evil people the world was better off without. He liked to play that he didn't read the memos or pay attention at the briefings, but he always knew who he was shooting and why, and he always told himself that he would never shoot someone who didn't deserve it.

But he had killed quite a lot of people in his life, sometimes even children. When he was in Iraq, he had been assigned to provide cover for a team of engineers who were trying to reassemble the power grid. A group of insurgents opened fire on them, and Barton fought back, one arrow for each shooter. They collected the bodies and it was obvious which kills were his – the ones with arrows sticking out – and one of the bodies with arrows sticking out was a boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen. One of the guys in his unit tried to keep him from seeing, then clapped him on the shoulder and said, "You didn't know, man. You didn't know." But he knew, he had known before he fired. He had looked at the shooter's face and it was too round, too soft to be a grown man. As far as Barton was concerned, "you didn't know," was the coward's way out. What he told himself was, "You did what had to be done."

So why was this woman different? Why did his mind balk at the idea of killing her? It would mean losing everything he built up at SHIELD. It was like Buck and Barney and the scared old woman all over again. It was like a dirty, sniffly little boy dressed in torn-up overalls with no shirt underneath, lying in the dust under his trailer praying stupid prayers and trying not to hear whatever was going on inside.

Clint knew he was a good shot and a good agent. He loved to push limits which meant that, in a way, he liked to have limits. He wanted to work for somebody. He wanted to work _with_ somebody. And now Phil Coulson was his friend? No, maybe not quite. Clint wasn't exactly keen on friends and he wasn't sure he would ever be. But somebody worthwhile, somebody worth something to him, somebody who valued Clint, maybe just as the guy who never missed, but maybe also as a guy who deserved to have a drink or something nice or some dignity once in a while. So maybe Clint was pretty happy with his life at SHIELD. Maybe he really wanted to stay there. Maybe he wanted to keep working with Phil Coulson.


	9. Chapter 9

They picked up a car from the first safe house and headed north, to where Belarus shared a border with Latvia and Russia.

"I think we should make some changes to op procedure," said Barton.

Coulson jiggled the air vents back and forth before concluding that they weren't working at all. "Since when do you care about op procedure?"

"I think instead of killing the mark, we should not kill the mark."

Coulson rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't have expected you to be swayed by a pretty face, at least not one with ovaries." Barton had never particularly bothered to hide his sexual orientation, though for reasons Coulson had never understood, he strongly preferred to call himself a fag, rather than gay.

"Okay, first of all," said Barton, "I don't think anybody would like to see a face with ovaries attached. Aren't they all squishy and gooey? And second of all, it's not about that. We can't kill her. It's not right."

"Not right? This is one of the easiest calls we've made in a long time. She's killed a lot of people, many of them perfectly innocent, not to mention the four SHIELD agents who were sent after her and came back in body bags."

"But she's…I mean, it's not like she really chose this life, is it?"

"It would be wonderful if SHIELD could be an international force for second chances, but there were no second chances for the forty-seven patients who died in the hospital fire she deliberately set, not to mention that no SHIELD agent has ever gotten within two hundred meters of her without dying. That's why we've brought you in to take her out at a distance. Kind of hard to offer her a second chance under those circumstances."

Clint shifted in his seat and muttered in response.

"What was that?"

"I said it's not a second chance, Coulson. Come on, you read the file. They took her when she was five, told her that her family was dead, indoctrinated her into all this shit. She never had a first chance. Somebody who grows up like that, do that really have a choice?"

Coulson sighed. "She's not you, Barton. You wouldn't have taken the jobs she's done."

"I wasn't thinking that…look, I want to try to bring her in alive."

"No. We have our orders and for damn good reason."

"I wasn't asking. I was telling you as a courtesy."

"Suicidality was never one of your more attractive qualities."

"Fuck off, sir," said Clint as he curled on his side in the passengers seat to sleep.

* * *

Barton woke an hour or so later and rubbed at the back of his neck. "How old were you," he asked sleepily, "your first time?"

"Do you really think that's an appropriate question?"

"I think the next time you see me, you're going to have to kill or capture me, because I'll be a rogue asset, so I don't really give a damn about appropriate and inappropriate."

"You never gave a damn about appropriate and inappropriate, so don't pretend that's just starting up now. And if you try to negotiate with the Black Widow, you're just going to end up dead, so I'm not particularly concerned with your future status with SHIELD."

"I've always thought you had a nice ass." Barton rubbed his eyes, still half-awake.

Coulson sighed. "How old were you?"

"Fifteen."

"I was twenty."

"Late bloomer?"

"I grew up in a small town. I only knew one other gay boy and we didn't happen to like each other much. Then I was in college and ROTC somewhat limited my options."

"Why does a gay Quaker join the military?"

"I thought it was the right thing to do."

"You think killing the Black Widow is the right thing to do?"

No good was going to come from restarting that conversation, so Coulson ignored Barton's question. "So, fifteen? Somebody you knew in the circus?"

"He's in your records. Buck Chisholm, Trickshot."

"He was a good two decades older than you."

"Yeah, I know that," said Barton, a little too quickly.

"He was abusive?" guessed Coulson. It wasn't a shot in the dark, it was a reasoned hypothesis based on what he knew about Chisholm specifically and the general character of middle-aged men who had sex with teenagers.

"No," Barton shook his head, "he didn't beat me or anything like that."

Coulson waited. He had conducted enough interrogations to be familiar with the pattern. 'No, it wasn't as bad as X, it was just X-1.'

"Would you believe he had me convinced I didn't like fucking? I mean, hand jobs and blow jobs, yeah, but I really thought that I just wasn't cut out for fucking."

"How'd he convince you of that?"

"You know I'd never answer any of this shit if I thought I was ever going to see you again," said Barton, still apparently planning his suicide mission to convert the Black Widow. He paused. "He never forced me or anything like that. I was just too chickenshit to say 'no' or 'slow down' or 'isn't this what lube is for'?"

Coulson couldn't imagine that most parentless, lonely fifteen-year-old boys would have it in themselves to challenge their father-figure-boyfriend-mentors on matters of sex, but he knew that Barton wouldn't appreciate the sympathy, so he remained silent.

"He had other ideas," said Barton, "stuff with his friends sometimes when we were in a town where he knew people. Put on a show, or maybe there would be pictures. You remember the first assignment I had, to look at all that kiddie porn to find that missing boy? I was so fucking terrified there would be a picture of me in there."

Coulson turned on the headlights. The street was getting foggy. "SHIELD is contracted to run those searches from time to time. If I ever find a picture of you, I'll ensure all copies are destroyed."

Barton nodded. He picked a coin up from the change tray and began rolling it over his knuckles. "Thanks," he said after a moment.

They both fell silent. Barton made another half-hearted scan through the radio stations, but all he could find was foreign-language talk radio and what might have been polka underneath a thick veil of static.

After a few minutes, Barton straightened in his seat. "I'm still not going to kill her."

Coulson's eyes twitched slightly to the right. "Barton, I'm aware you'd rather I didn't know anything about your life prior to SHIELD. And the reality is that in a sense I know very little: all of the dates, none of the details."

Clint tensed. One of the reasons he didn't like people knowing about his life was that they tended to use it against him in arguments ( _'You only think that because of what happened to you.'_ ) but Coulson had managed to avoid being a complete asshat for three years, so Clint held his tongue. For the moment.

"I've certainly gotten the picture, however," continued Coulson, "that most of the people in your life who normally would have been giving you guidance over the years either weren't doing it or weren't doing a very good job. That probably wasn't terribly pleasant to live through, but it's occurred to me more than once if it has something to do with…" He trailed off, unsure exactly how to explain. "You're very independent-minded. I've never known another SHIELD agent who would just decide he was going to reform the Black Widow instead of assassinating her." He shook his head. "It's a stupid idea. You're going to die. But I can't help thinking it's a little honorable and a little brave."

Clint glanced over at Coulson. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he said nothing.

"We're about forty minutes from the safehouse at the Russian border. When we get there, I'll send our confirmation codes to SHIELD, and then I'm going to sleep. I should be able to give you at least a five hour headstart."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Go. Find her. Offer her a second chance and die in the attempt."

"You'll be reprimanded."

"It had to happen sometime."

"You're really going to…"

"Barton, I think this is a terrible idea. I think you're going to die without having accomplished the mission or any variation thereof and I'm going to have to break in a new sniper, likely one without your sparkling wit. But I'm not going to stand in your way."

"Ha, I knew you loved me."

"What I love most is your humility."

"And my biceps."

"And your biceps," acknowledged Coulson. It was just a joke, but he normally wouldn't say something like that about a co-worker. It didn't really matter so much now.

* * *

The safehouse was not really deserving of the name 'house'. It could conceivably be called a safeshack, if in fact it were safe. Looking at the foundation, Phil had his doubts about safety, but they had stayed in worse.

Phil lingered over the trunk of the car, separating equipment. "They'll change the passwords on the supply lockers as soon as it's known you're rogue, so you should take most of the supplies and cash. You should take the car, too."

"I don't want to leave you stranded in Eastern Europe," said Barton. "At this point, I figure you don't know how to manage without me."

"I'll be fine," said Coulson with a thin smirk. "I can call in resources, you can't. So take what you need."

Barton hesitated a moment longer before holding out his hand for the car keys. "I'll see you in a few weeks," he said.

Coulson shook his hand. "It's been an honor serving with you, Clint."

Maybe it was the combination of the affection and the respect and the formality and his first name, but Barton suddenly doubted his decision. Maybe he really just wanted to stay on with SHIELD and work with Phil Coulson and maybe he could just break his wrist so they'd have to call off the op.

But then the Black Widow would kill more innocents and SHIELD would send more and more agents after her. This had to end one way or the other.

"It's been a blast," Barton grinned, "Phil."

* * *

_Clint stakes out a space that he can secure – a windowless room in the ruins of an abandoned Hydra base. He stocks it with everything he needs to keep two people alive – food, water, booze, medicine, and a couple of decks of cards._

_Nobody knows how he captures the Black Widow. Entangling arrows from SHIELD's R &D department certainly play a role, but Clint himself is sentimental and he thinks that maybe she lets herself be captured because she wants to change her ways._

_She's bound to steel beams with steel cuffs. Hands, feet, and neck. He knows how to secure wily prisoners and he takes no chances. He offers her water and says he'll put scraps of cloth between the cuffs and her skin as soon as he's satisfied that he can come near without getting killed._

_She curses at him in Russian for the first hour, then falls silent for the next. In the third, she questions him in broken English with a thick accent, "Who are you? Why you take me? What you wanting?"_

" _I want to make you good," he says._

_She laughs. She doesn't believe him. She leans forward so her cleavage is showing and speaks in a low, sultry register._

" _I guess I really am the man for the job," he says, "because that shit don't work on me."_

_She rolls her eyes. "Works on every man."_

" _Not me, dollface. You know the word 'fag'?"_

" _Is for smoking."_

" _Naw, other meaning. Men who like men."_

" _Oh, in Russian is goluboi."_

" _Sure, whatever floats your boat." He shrugs. "But I promise, you're not here for sex."_

_The next few days are all the same. He gives her food and water and unlocks her legs so she can piss without help. She is mostly stubbornly silent, but he chats with her when she wants to talk. He spends most of his time singing and throwing playing cards at targets across the room._

" _Three green and speckled frogs / sitting on some speckled logs / eating the most delicious bugs." He pauses and points to her._

" _I am not saying it."_

" _Don't say it, sing it."_

_She glares, but after a moment, she mutters, "Yum, yum," with a look of abject disdain on her face._

" _One jumped in to the pool / where it was nice and cool / then there were two speckled frogs."_

_He sings the entirety of Daft Punk's_ _ Around the World _ _despite the fact that this is simply the phrase 'around the world' repeated 144 times. He counts on his fingers and says, "I guess it's better with the techno backup. When we get out of here, I'll take you to a club."_

" _What is…'when we get out of here'? You can let me out right now."_

" _Nope," he says, "I really can't. I can't let you go back and hurt people."_

" _Then kill me," she says._

" _Naw, that was the first plan. I got a new plan."_

" _You want to making me good," she says, her overwhelming skepticism evident._

" _Yep." He pulls out a pack of cards, obviously planning to practice throwing them again. "See, I know somebody like you. He got treated bad by everybody and the one nice thing, the one truly selfless thing he did…" He trails off for a moment, flexing his fingers. "He tried to protect a little kid and got himself hurt in the process. And the little kid wasn't even grateful. He ended up…his life just ended up all wrong. And I can't fix him, but I'm going to fix you."_

" _Maybe I am not wanting fix."_

" _Yeah, he'd say the same thing. Well, not exactly the same because he can speak English right, but the same idea." He smiles thinly and shrugs. "Look, it's like this. The reason you're like this is the same reason you don't get to choose, because you really can't choose, not yet. They took you when you were just a little kid, and they told you your family was dead and they trained you in that place like you were just a weapon and not a person, so how could you possibly know whether you want it or not?"_

_She just stares back at him, lips slightly open, as if half-ready to speak. After a moment, she straightens. "You say you can't fix him. Who is him?"_

" _My br-." He cuts himself off before he realizes that he has to make a different choice if he wants to make progress. She wants to hear this story and maybe she needs to hear it, so he does something he has never done before and he tells her about the trailer and the violence and the funeral and foster care and the circus and crime and most of all about Barney._

_When he is done, she is quiet._

" _I'm in debt to him. And I can't pay it back because whatever he would want would just make everything worse."_

" _What is 'debt'?" She mouths the word a few times._

" _Like 'owe', like somebody's got one up on you. Like red in the ledger."_

_She is silent again._

_It is two days later when she asks, "Are you… you are remembering your parents?"_

_He nods. "Yeah. Not a ton of memories, but I definitely remember them."_

_She says, "I remember nothing."_

_It's many more days before she says, "They tell me I like my first kill, but I do not think so," and more days after that before she says, "I am twelve years old and I am living with only men. And I," she pauses. "Blood," she says, "for women just. I am not knowing the word."_

" _You mean 'period'?" he asks hesitantly, firmly of the belief that one of the few inherent benefits to being a gay man is the inalienable right to avoid all talk of menstruation._

" _Yes," she says, "period. I am not knowing what it is and I am with only men, so I am never seen it before." She very slowly closes and opens her eyes. "I think I am having a tumor, a cancer. I think I am dying. And I am being not sad, not scared, because death cannot be different from…what else can death be?"_

* * *

Three months had passed since Phil Coulson bade farewell to Clint Barton in Belarus. In the eyes of SHIELD he had lost an asset and failed in an op, but he had years of impeccable service to fall back on, and the rebuke from his superiors was mild. They had mostly displayed an 'I-knew-it-all-along' attitude, claiming that Barton was a loose cannon and it had only been a matter of time.

Coulson didn't set them straight. He knew the truth and that was sufficient.

He had tried not to wonder what became of Barton, not to scan intel reports for signs his body had been recovered, and for the most part, he was successful. Coulson had always been skilled at compartmentalizing.

His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

_ge brain what do you want to do toniht? the same thing we do evry night pinky meet parking lot behind rizzos at 11pm come alone_

The number was unknown, but the Pinky and the Brain reference was only known within SHIELD, and the spelling was pure Barton.

Coulson looked at the clock. 10:37. He stood and grabbed his jacket.

* * *

Rizzo's parking lot was poorly lit. It would have been nearly impossible to secure if that had been Coulson's goal, but it wasn't. He hadn't brought backup. He hadn't even worn a vest. Maybe's Barton's recklessness was posthumously rubbing off on him.

A motorcycle with two riders pulled in and stopped by the dumpster. The smaller rider in the back got off and immediately put her hands above her head.

"Go on," the larger rider nudged her.

She walked forward slowly. She had deeply red hair that was vibrant despite being filthy and unwashed. She was wearing motorcycle leathers that didn't fit particularly well, but her figure was still obvious beneath. She passed through a think slat of light from the road and her face was illuminated.

The Black Widow knelt on the ground about ten feet away from Phil Coulson and said. "I surrender myself to SHIELD."

Behind her, Clint Barton leaned on the motorcycle. He was his own man, through and through, or he never would have tried this stunt in the first place. And he was a good man, or he would have tried to join her or kill her for a bounty instead. And he was still Clint-motherfucking-Barton, so he shimmied his hips and made a lewd gesture before winking at Coulson and saying, "I hope nobody touched my stuff while I was gone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> **Post notes:**
> 
> **How much of this is canon?**
> 
> Well, for starters, Phil Coulson was never in the comics and Clint Barton was never a SHIELD employee in the comics. Clint's backstory in this fic is pretty closely modeled on his backstory in the comics. In the comics, as in this fic, Clint's father is drunk and physically abusive. In the comics, as in the fic, his parents die when he's young, in a car crash caused by his father's drunk driving. In the comics, he goes with Barney to live in an orphanage before running away to join the circus. The stories of the Swordsman and Trickshot are roughly correct with some variation. By the end of the Trickshot story in the comics, Barney is an undercover FBI agent, which is more than a little ridiculous, so I changed that. In the comics, Barney betrays and uses Clint over and over throughout his life; I just compacted that element of the story a little. In the comics, Clint gets involved with low-level crime and eventually stages some weird stunt with Jarvis to join the Avengers.
> 
> Clint in the comics is not illiterate, but he is definitely uneducated and very low-brow.
> 
> Clint's sexual orientation in the comics is clear: he's heterosexual. He doesn't even have a deep and profound enduring emotional bond with another man, like Tony & Steve or Charles & Erik. (Yes, he's got a thing with Steve, but it's much more that he views Steve as a father figure.) That said, in the comics, he really doesn't have a romantic relationship with Natasha Romanov either; they dated briefly and broke up amicably. Since then, Clint dated other women and got married. Whenever Clint & Natasha talk about their past relationship, they always agree that it was a mistake and they're now platonic friends. In comics canon, the OTP is Hawkeye/Mockingbird – it's a good story and very Clint.
> 
> I like Clint / Coulson, and I'm the goddamn author, so that's what I wrote.
> 
> **Random:**
> 
> The bit about Clint being baptized as a Lutheran wasn't made up out of thin air. There are a lot of Lutherans in Waverly, Iowa.
> 
> "John Henry was a Steel Driving Man" is a real and frankly pointless American folk song.
> 
> Caligula & Incitatus – Incitatus was Caligula's horse. The mad emperor Caligula wanted to appoint his horse to political office.
> 
> While writing this, I was thinking very much about contrasting the relationship between Clint & Buck (in which Buck isn't abusive or cruel, but is definitely just out for himself) and the relationship I wrote between a teenage Tony and a middle-aged Steve (in which Steve was very concerned about Tony's well-being) in Masters of the Universe.
> 
> In case you were wondering why the photographs of Clint and Barney's injuries were Polaroid pictures instead of regular ones, that was standard practice until a few years ago. If a school nurse or doctor saw suspicious injuries, he or she was supposed to photograph them, but for privacy reasons, the pictures couldn't be processed through a local pharmacy. Thus, Polaroids were the method of choice. Nowadays, digital cameras are used.
> 
> It's been fun, thanks to all who have read and reviewed.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Content Warnings (in no particular order, possibly spoilery):** Child neglect and endangerment, physical abuse of children (moderately graphic), domestic violence (moderately graphic) emotional neglect and mistreatment of children, sexual exploitation of youth, child labor, human trafficking, sexual assault, harassment based on real or perceived sexual orientation, drinking to excess, and culturally or racially insensitive comments (made by a character with good intentions). Sometimes these elements are followed by appropriate justice and/or caretaking, sometimes not. I don’t like to go into too much detail because I really try to avoid spoilers, but if you need more information to determine whether this story is safe for you, contact me privately and I’d be happy to oblige.
> 
>  
> 
> **No, these don't all happen to Clint; they just all appear in the story.**


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